The Young Turks - Moscow Fool - July 9, 2025

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial and start selling today at ⁠shopify.com/tyt Detainees at Trump’s ICE facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” allege mistreatment, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott brushes off flood criticism as “the word choice of losers.” Trump claims he warned Putin he’d “bomb the s*** out of Moscow” if Russia ever invaded Ukraine. Right-wingers freak out over comments from the director of the Superman movie. Hosts: Yasmin Khan & Wosny Lambre SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hello, everyone and welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host for the first hour of the show today. I'm Yasmin O'Lea Khan and my co-host. You know him and love him. It's Wazney Lambray.

He's the senior writer at The Ringer and the host of Waz Speaks. How you doing, Waz? I'm doing fantastic. Happy to be on with you guys. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be a good show. We have quite a few stories to get to.

I really want to get right into this first one. So let's roll the tape on that one. Welcome to Alligator Alcatraz. The entrance here is a 30 foot tall wall. None of this was here five days ago. It's got razor wire on the top. Just unbelievably impressive. Not a fun place to be put in prison.

You do not want to go here. not want to go here. I'm getting swarmed at my mosquitoes right now, and we saw at least 30 alligators on our way and driving. It is in the middle of truly nowhere. It took us an hour, four hour drive to get here today. It's crazy. Last week, Florida's alligator Alcatraz welcomed its first round of migrants into the haphazard facility, and like we all expected, it is not fit for human confinement. So CBS News Miami spoke with detainees at the facility and they claim that they are enduring inhumane conditions, including a lack of access to good water, inadequate food, and the denial of religious rights. So here is some of the things that

what the detainees are saying. One detainee, a Cuban reggaeton singer Liam Zilla Figuera, who was arrested on assault charges, told CBS Miami, we've been here at Alcatan. trans since Friday. There's over 400 people here. There's no water to take a bath. It's been four days since I've taken a bath. They only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots. They never take off the lights for 24 hours. The mosquitoes are as big as elephants. It's unbelievable. Another detainee had this to say, I'm on the edge of losing my mind. I've gone three days without taking my medicine. It's impossible to sleep with this white light that's on all day. They took the Bible I had and they said in here there is no right to religion and my Bible is the only thing that keeps my faith and now I'm losing my faith. Yeah, that'll do it. And a third detainee had this to say, I don't know their motive for doing this. If it's a form of torture, a lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here. Okay, so that is the scary part here. People who shouldn't be sent to alligator alcatraz, which was only for the worst,

of the worst are now being sent there and attorneys for those currently being held in the detention center cannot even reach their clients it seems. So Magdalena Coupries of Coupries and Associates who is representing a Honduran immigrant located at the facility told this to Forbes. We were advised that they had no instructions on how to handle attorney visits. Chelsea and Noel of De Brule and Noel also sought had sought to contact her client. My client was transferred to the Alligator Alcatraz facility after being picked up from an ice hold. She said in an interview, since his transfer, I have been able to schedule, unable to schedule any contact with him. I have reached out to the Chrome Detention Center

and they advise me that they have no information on the new facility as of yet. Florida officials have predictably denied the allegations that this facility is subpar, even though they put it up in like, what do you say, five days, claiming that the reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false, the facility meets all required standards and is in good working order. But I guess, you know, maybe all of that is just subjective. But I mean, like how can it be up to any kind of standards when it was just built in less than a week? So here's this from Ali Valshi over at MSNBC. He said, Florida's Attorney General James Usmeier said the facility will mostly consist of tents and

trailers with no brick and mortar construction required, which seems not great considering Florida stifling summer heat and notorious humidity and a hurricane season that is predicted to be even worse than in past years. It was also reported last week, five Democratic state lawmakers were denied access to the facility due to safety reasons. So we don't actually actually know what is going on inside the facility. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Kava is now demanding monitoring access to the facility due to all the reports that are coming out about it. She said this, detention centers like Chrome and the newly open facility in the Everglades

have been placed in isolated areas with poor access to hospitals and legal counsel. Families and advocates are being shut out and the public is left in the dark. In two letters now sent to Christy Noem and the Florida AG Uthmeyer, Kava is requesting a few different things, a detailed report of all deaths that have occurred in ICE custody in Florida, meetings with local officials, medical experts to discuss detention center conditions, weekly site reports, remote video monitoring access, and scheduled site visits. So Waz, I want to get your thoughts on this, we're gonna be talking about the monetization and the memeification of all of this in a little bit, but are we surprised that this thing is being

run about as well as like a public toilet? Well, I mean, we can't be surprised, especially as you mentioned, yes, how haphazardly this all came together. They kind of just slapped it together as quickly as possible, which is why it's like these shoddly built tents and trailers because they, you know, they ran into the problem that just picking people up, you got to be able to process them before you move them out. And they're not able to, you know, meet the rate of their deportations that has been their stated goal, which, you know, if the reporting is to believe they're trying to at least surpass the Obama levels of, I think it was something like $400,000 a year or something like that. And, you know,

they're just not getting to that level yet. They weren't even able to reach $200,000, I think. by the time June came. So they were at a slower pace. And they realized that they have to be able to detain these folks instead of allowing them to just, you know, go through their process, their court process and, you know, going out and doing the process in the way that it was meant to be carried out. I just think, you know, again, we talked about this a lot on the show. The depravity is kind of the point. They're trying to send a message to all undocumented people that when they catch you, they're going to put you basically in a gulag, and they want people to, quote, unquote, self-deport. And this is despite the fact that most of the people that they're picking up are doing the process legally.

Now, conservatives, what they would say is that Biden, he didn't have the authority, he did these executive orders that sort of made it way less restrictive in terms of the standards for people who were seeking asylum, et cetera, etc. That being said, he was the president, the duly elected president at the time. And these folks are actually following the laws under which they came under, the pretense under which they came. And conservatives would say that was illegitimate and therefore we get to treat these people like pieces of garbage. Yeah, I mean, I had a Republican voter recently say to me like, oh, why can't they just come over here legally? A lot of the people who are going through legal avenues, they're being picked up at courthouse. Whenever they come from, they show up for their court appearances because that is part

of the legal process. And then they're being thrown into facilities like this one and their lawyers can't even get to them. So we're gonna get to a lot more of that. The depravity really was on display though with that clip that we just saw from Benny Johnson and he was like giddy about how horrible it was and how high the walls were and how isolated it was and how like there's so many mosquitoes there. Mosquitoes are not just, they don't just make you itchy.

They carry so many diseases, like it's really unsafe for people to be there. So anyway, of course, they're going to use this as a way to, you know, get some good coverage on social media and make some money off of it because they wouldn't be the MAGA people that we have come to know if they weren't. So the new surrounding Alligator Alcatraz only gets worse because the GOP is treating the literal torture of these migrants as a tourist attraction. You can see there in the video. It's unbelievable.

Republicans have also sought to capitalize on the center by selling alligator alcatraz merchandise in two different online stores. One of those stores is run by the Republican Party of Florida, and the other one is run by the Florida AG. Uthmire. It's unbelievable. Take a look. These potentially torturous conditions for undocumented immigrants are being monetized. It's as depraved as you can imagine. The Republican Party of Florida pushed out this campaign email last week saying in part, quote, the feds of green lit alligator alcatraz, Florida's

gator guarded python patrolled prison for illegal aliens who thought they could game the system. Surrounded by miles of swamp and bloodthirsty wildlife, this ain't no vacation spot. It's a one-way ticket to regret for criminals who will wish they'd self-deported. And then there's the option to snag your swag because, yes, of course, they're selling merch. They're always selling merch. For just $15, you can have your very own alligator alcatraz beer coozy. There's nothing funny about this. This is sadistic glorification of human pain and suffering. There's nothing classier that I can think of than an alligator alcatraz beer coozy. So Uthmeyer's shop has has an even larger variety of items,

including buttons and of course bumper stickers because we know that they love their bumper stickers. Was the corruption here is kind of out in the open. The inhumanity is being celebrated. This place is active in our country right now. Due process has already been suspended in this country. They're defied like denying people the right to religion. Where are the constitutionalists now?

I never thought I'd say this one, but where are the Christian activists? And that's the thing is like, I'm not a, Christian. I'm not religious, but like people have a right to their Bibles. They have a right to practice their own religion and just outright denying it. If that is actually what happened, that is unconstitutional. So we all knew something like this was inevitable once Trump got into office, but maybe there's some hope in the fact that this place seems like it's being so poorly run that they're either unwilling to spend the money on keeping it open, or maybe it'll just

becomes so much of a cesspool that it can't stay open. I mean, it doesn't seem like they're running with any kind of standards right now or trying to meet any kind of safety criteria. Maybe that there's a silver lining there. I mean, they're not off to a great start. And you know that they're they're not going to funnel any of the merch revenue from what they're selling back into the facility. The people who are selling it are just going to keep that money. Of course not. I mean, corruption is the key word. And I'm happy you use that. that there. But before we get to the corruption part of this whole debacle, I think folks, the viewers need to understand that the anti-immigration portion of the right wing and more

specifically the MAGA coalition is one of the most animating elements of Donald Trump's rise in the Republican Party, right? Like there's this anti-elite sort of establishment, whether that be the media, whether that be the government, whether that be college universities, you know, all of these institutions that we've come to love and trust, there's a backlash towards the institutions. There's a backlash against neoliberalism, which is just like marketize the hell out of everything, outsource every single American's freaking job overseas for the cheapest labor possible. And then, you know, a rejection of that neoliberalism. And then what ties it together is this anti-immigrant sentiment, which I know, yes, there's a lot of xenophobia,

racism tied into it, but a lot of it is an economic sort of outlook, that they're bringing all of these who they would call illegal people in so that they can work for cheap. Our economy is based on cheap labor. It's why like they fight us tooth and nail over a federal increase of the minimum wage, which is why like even Biden, a freaking union bus, with the railroad workers every single, every now and again, excuse me. Like our economy is based off of this idea that we need an unlimited reserve of cheap old labor, right? And so the movement is based on that. And, you know, the anti-immigration part, like, yes, I think Trump is playing with fire here. The Republicans, the right wing,

they're playing with fire. Yes, to the base. To the people who love Trump the most, They cannot get enough of this. They feel like the immigration system has been unfair. They feel like people have jumped the line. They feel like resources are being allocated to new people who they themselves are being told there's no resources for anything pertaining to their lives. Cool. You're making the most foaming at the mouth, right wingers.

Yeah, they're getting really excited right now. However, independence, obviously Democrats and liberals and leftists and all that other stuff, they're not flown with this. You can go look at Joe Rogan. You go and look at Tim Dillon. These people are not down with this, rounding up workers at Home Depot. It's insane. And then, you know, for the corruption piece, yes, I know I've been yapping up right now.

I think before the corruption piece, they've basically signed a blank check for ICE and the immigration roundups. This is the biggest law enforcement agency in America, probably in the world right now, this anti-immigration regime. they're not going to hire a bunch and train a bunch of people into how to do this. They're going to outsource this to private companies. Bro, they're just going to rake in this cash. And I promise you, they are not going to deport 10 million people in four years. I promise you, it's just going to be a blank check to these private companies. Yeah.

What did you say? The economy is built on cheap labor. You're absolutely right. And right now, they are struggling to reconcile these two things. On one hand, they need the cheap labor to appease these business bosses. And honestly, in the capitalist system that we have here in this country, that's all that matters is cheap labor. They have to maximize the dollar. They have to maximize profits.

That is the whole point of our entire economy. And so whenever the dollar is prioritized, that means that people are not prioritized. And that's why the idea of running this country as a business never made a whole lot of sense to me as a leftist or whatever you want to call me. because if you run it like a business. That's what we're going to call you. Yeah. But that's the thing. Like if you run it as a business, then you're not running it for people.

And govern it is for the governing of people. And I don't know why people don't really understand that. I think like there's an idea that in a perfect world, there's some kind of balance that can be struck somewhere where people would get all the things that they need and want to live quite comfortable, safe lives. But at the same time, we're still going to be like, promoting business and running an efficient economy. Sure, those are good goals to have, right? But whenever business is the goal, then the person is no longer the goal, right? Business means low prices, which means people are not getting paid.

And it means higher profits, which means people are getting overcharged. The consumer is getting overcharged, but also at the same time, the consumer is really the only thing of value in this country right now. Businesses can't run without consumers. And here we are today, and now you see Trump, who is trying to appease these business bosses. But at the same time, he's trying to appease his MAGA base that is incredibly xenophobic that really wants to see all these people get deported. I think you mentioned earlier in the segment that they're trying to beat Obama's numbers, right? And they can't do it. They're not doing, they're not doing a good enough job at meeting these

arbitrary benchmarks that they've set for themselves, right? And they promise, you know, we're going to get rid of all these criminals and all these gang members. But the truth is, a lot of these immigrants are not criminals and they're not gang members. So inevitably, they have to just start locking people up. So, and we just saw, you know, Trump, he alienated a huge swath of his base just by floating the idea of amnesty for illegal farm workers in this country right now. But this administration, they do this thing where they have like a problem that is being presented to, you know, something that their base thinks is a problem. And they say, fine, we'll work on that. And then their solution just creates much bigger problems that they pretend to just not see.

So I'll give you the final word before we get a break. I mean, yeah, that's another thing to understand. I think we need to hit home substantively. Like, I think even with the insane new ice budget, all of the craziness they're doing in MacArthur Park with the freaking army dudes on horses looking ridiculous. All of that is spectacle. Like, you don't do spectacle if you actually have the goods. if you actually have a way of delivering this thing that you told all of these people that you were going to deliver for them, which is roll back completely, not just seal off the border, which you notice they don't talk about it anymore. Nobody's coming across the border anymore, but actually reverse it in the sense of sending all of these people, quote, unquote, back to where they came from. They're not going to do it. They allocated all this money. It's not going to happen.

Yeah. So good luck to them, I guess. I don't know. No, like, they have to, this thing can't stay open. Like, this thing cannot go on. And the people who are supporting it are very much so on the wrong side of history. All right. We're going to take a break. We will be right back. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio.

Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Fresh excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry! Smurfs. Only in dinner's July 18th. Welcome back to the young Turks. I'm Yasmin, and I'm here with Waz. We have a lot more stories to get to, so let's just get right into it. You probably happened, yeah. And it was gross negligence back then.

Now this happened in the dead police enormous. Are you going to last for an investigation? Who is to blame here? You ask, I'm going to use your words. Who's to blame? Know this. That's the word choice of losers. That's my governor. So in the wake of the catastrophic Texas flooding that killed over 120 people,

including 27 young campers, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas made it clear that he is not interested in assigning blame to any person or agency for the massive death toll. And to make his point, he used this very bizarre and I think unnecessary football analogy. Let me explain one thing about Texas. And that is Texas, every square inch of our state cares about football. You could be in Hunt, Texas, Huntsville, Texas, Houston, Texas, any size community, they care about football. High school, Friday night lights, college football are pro. And know this.

Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame. The championship teams are the ones to say, don't worry about it, man, we got this. We're going to make sure that we go score again, then we're going to win this game. The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. What Texas is all about is solutions. I'm exhausted.

That metaphor went on for way longer than it needed to. But as weird as that metaphor was, Abbott did say the Texas legislature would be investigating the flash floods. and trying to figure out how similar tragedies can be prevented in the future. Before we talk about whether there is actually a culprit to blame Waz as a non-Texan, I want to get your initial thoughts on what my governor just had to say. What do you think? Well, I may not be a Texan, but I was a former football player, high school to be exact. I played cornerback varsity, yeah, I have my varsity letters in football.

Yeah, just saying. No big deal. No big, no, but seriously to get at what he said, In football, we don't point fingers. He's actually exactly wrong about that. He actually couldn't be more wrong about what he just said. Because win or lose in football, the next day that you show up the practice or work or whatever you call in it, whether it's high school, college, or the pro level, you have what we call film session.

where win or lose, those plays where you were not at your best, we pointed out in front of the entire team and be like, look, Lambrai, you messed that up right there next time you're going to do way better. And famously, actually, Bill Belichick and New England Patriots, the most winning in coach in the history of football, probably the greatest football coach ever famously would even rip Tom Brady in film sessions. That was like part of the culture. Nobody was above the film sessions. Everybody had to do their jobs. And even Tom Brady was held to account at these film sessions. So that's the difference between actual people who played football and who actually hold this ethos and this idiot Greg Abbott is that no, actually you should be taking

account and actually holding yourself and those around you accountable for this awfully grave mistake that was made. Yeah, okay. So I was wondering about that. I'm not an athlete. I've never been an athlete, but I did just watch Ted Lassow. And I was like, that's not what they do on Ted Lassau. It's not what they're doing in any sport.

I mean, Abbott, he's right about one thing. Like football is like a weird big deal here in Texas. I don't get it, but I don't like consider myself a real Texan. Like Friday night lights, like that is real. But like in high school, I went to every varsity game in high school because it was just the thing to do on Friday nights. I don't think I ever paid attention to the game, but I was there and it was a good time, you know.

But he is wrong about like everything else that he did say. So naturally there has been a lot of discussion and debate about how 120 people could be killed in a flash flooding event. And many Democrats have pointed the finger at Donald Trump in part because the Trump administration has proposed a 25% cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's current annual budget of $6.1 billion. dollars, NOAA is the agency which oversees the National Weather Service. To be fair, though, those cuts would not take effect in October, well, they go into effect in October of this year, so they wouldn't have contributed to this particular case. However, that's not to say that reduced resources won't impact natural disaster forecasting in the future.

It is true, though, that the staffing levels of the NWS have already been reduced thanks to Doge. So in total, the NWS lost 600 of its approximately 4,200 staff, causing several offices across the country to operate without the necessary staffing. However, climate experts' opinions on whether the staffing cuts impacted the response in Texas are a little bit mixed. Some said that the NWS forecast and flood warnings last week were adequate as adequate as they could have expected to be. And then there is the lack of emergency warning system along the Guadalupe River, which local officials have been talking about for years. So since 2016, the topic of a flood warning system for Kerr County has come up at 20 different county commissioners meetings. In March of 2016, then Commissioner Tom Moser noted other Texas locations had these state-of-the-art flood warning sirens, but they weren't used locally, even though this is probably one.

one of the highest flood prone regions in the entire state according to the meeting minutes. But the county was not able to secure FEMA grant funding to implement the system. So it seems like there is a multitude of factors that contributed to the very high death toll and it seems to just keep climbing. It is hard to assign blame on any one person or policy though. So Republicans are accusing Democrats of using a tragedy to score political points, which is something they definitely wouldn't know anything about. But similar to Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, he scolded anyone trying to blame their political opponents for a natural disaster. By the way, this is the same guy who blamed Democrats for the Los Angeles fires and then threaten to withhold disaster

aid from California. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with this right here. Also, White House spokesperson Caroline Leave it agreed with Ted Cruz. Take a look. And many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game, and it is not. This is a national tragedy. Do you think those comments are depraved and despicable, especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children. Okay, but one person who had absolutely no issue bucking responsibility and pointing the finger was President Donald Trump, less than 24 hours before leave its comments, Trump said that while he, didn't necessarily want to blame Joe Biden for the flood.

He said this, oh my God. If you look at that water situation, that was really the Biden setup. Well, you know, I don't even know what that means. I don't know what that means. Okay, Wads, before I get your thoughts on this, I just, I need to mention this right before the show reporting came out that if anyone is to blame for the slow emergency response, it might actually be Christy know him. As the Homeland Security Secretary, she oversees FEMA, and she recently enacted a rule that

any contract or grant over $100,000 requires her personal sign-off before the funds can be released. So it was meant to be a cost-cutting measure that she was implementing for the department, but it's obviously not the most efficient. It cuts a lot of the autonomy that the department would have. So when FEMA would have started to act, like sending help and resources and aid to the the affected area, they quickly realized that they were unable to do so. They were knee-capped and they just couldn't do so without getting Chrissy Noem's approval. So I want to go back to that Trump quote because I read it and I was like, what if you look at that water situation that was really the Biden setup was, what do you make of that? Because I got nothing. I don't

know what that is. What water situation, what Biden set up did? It's so nonsensical. And the thing is, like, This river is, you know, it flows through the Texas Hill country. It's a very popular tourist destination, especially this time of year. It's already so hot here in Texas, that is where you go to cool off. You go to the hill country, there's trees, there's shade, and you float the rivers, and it's a very nice time. But the thing is, and this is, I think this is a problem across a lot of Texas. They don't want to spend a lot of money on preventative measures, right?

And as you saw from those meeting minutes in Kerr County, you know, they didn't spend the money on getting those sirens for the flood warning system, even though that is an area that was very, very prone to flooding. I know here in Houston and in the Galveston area, there's a lot of concern about the Galveston seawall, which protects a lot of the inland places and the island of Galveston from hurricanes and from storm surges and things like that. And it's also kind of like it's a big problem because here in Houston, we have the Houston. ship channel, which is like a lot of oil refineries and things like that. So, but they really just, they don't invest money on these preventative measures because if a big hurricane did come, which is not out of the question and have a direct hit on Houston and the ship channel, which is not out of the question, it would be a disaster not just for Houston, not just for Texas, but for the whole country. You know, when I hear read that Trump statement,

it honestly reminds me of Ron Burgundy from one of the greatest movies ever, Anchorman, And the fact that he's kind of just programmed to read whatever is on that teleprompter, Trump is programmed to blame literally anything and everything on Joe Biden. It just doesn't matter what the situation is, what the topic is. If it has a potential to make him look bad, he's going to reflexively blame Biden, as if Biden and his administration built up the infrastructure in this town in Texas. like as if Joe Biden had anything to do with this. And it's even, it's made even more rich by his press secretary going up there and

say you shouldn't be blaming people for political points. And then Trump does exactly that. Like, it's amazing that though that clip came right before. Oh, that's cheap. That's just like the Democrats. Blah, blah, blah. Scoring cheap points. Oh, that's disgusting.

People in mourning. And then Trump's like, blame Biden. For the water situation, for that water situation. That's a whole Biden set up. I feel like in his mind, like Donald Trump, like in Trump's mind, Biden is just out there, like, I don't know. I don't know what he thinks is happening. I don't know what, like, is Joe Biden out there like digging canals in Texas? Like, I don't know what he thinks is happening.

I think he, I think he knows that whatever comes out of his mouth, his biggest fans find plausible. And so, like, if he can get just those people on board with. with him, then it's worth it to do, even if it's the most blatant and ridiculous lie. I mean, no, you're absolutely right. I remember during the polar vortex in Texas, this is like common in my mind because I lived through it. But you know, for the rest of you guys, if you don't live here in 2021, there was a big breeze that hit Texas and our electric grid froze over. Everything was a disaster. And Texans died because they froze to death in their homes, while our surrounding states who were also hit with similar freezing temperatures,

they were just fine because of their electricity. But I remember our governor and Trump, they were on the news talking about windmills, you know, and they're like, oh, it's the windmills fault. The windmills are faulty, and that's why all this is happening. And also, it's only affecting Texans. And also, there are windmills in, like, Nordic countries that are doing just fine and are going through the winters and they're not causing people to freeze to death in their homes. But they said that. And so many Republicans and people who are watching Fox News, they were just like, oh, it was the windmills. We got to get rid of the windmills. And that was a narrative that flowed all the way across Texas. And it was like an active effort on behalf

of like other people to be like, that doesn't make any sense. And if you just think about it for two seconds, you would know it doesn't make any sense. So anyway, we got to take break, so we will be right back. Wind, windmills. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget.

After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. All right, welcome back to the show, Yaz and Was here. We have a couple more stories to get to, so let's get right into it. I don't know, we get, we get a lot of thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth. It's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. Oh, okay. Well, Trump, the master deal maker and negotiator, seems to have met his match in Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who has been notoriously difficult for American presidents to work with.

But new audio reveals that while Trump was on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, he was bragging about his ability to scare leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping into submission. His strategy, the more unhinged, the better. But Putin, I said, if you go in to Ukraine, the Obama is in Moscow. I'm telling you, I have no choice, the public once. The public. So, he goes, like, I don't believe you. I said, he said, no way, and I said, way. And then he goes, like, I don't believe you. But the truth is, he believed me 10%.

And I told you this, he believed he 10%. Then I'm with President Xi, China. But I said the same thing to them. to them. I said, you know, if you go into Taiwan, I'm going to bomb Beijing. He thought I was crazy. He said, hey, he's going to bomb me. I said, I have no choice. I got a problem. We're going to bomb baby. And he didn't believe either except 10%. And 10% is what you did. Try 5% would have been okay to it. And we never had a problem. We would have never had a problem. I love that audio. He was like, hey, Pruton, I'm going to have to bomb Moscow. And he goes,

No way. And I said way. Like, for real, watch out. I might just bomb Moscow. You never know. He's so crazy. He's so unhinged. That's the strategy there. So Trump, according to Trump, threatened to bomb the capital cities of both Russia and China in order to get the leaders of those countries to behave the way that he would like them to behave. And this is the first time that we're learning about these alleged threats that were made. In the past, he had often suggested that had he won the presidency in 2020, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine in the first place. He said that he had some strongly worded private discussions with Putin that had dissuaded him from taking military action against Ukraine. But then once Trump was ousted and was no

longer in office, then Putin felt free to invade without the threat of a crazy Trump looming over his head. So at the time, Trump never went into any detail about what those discussions entailed. Here's what he said. I had a very strong conversation with President Putin, and he understood, and I won't go into the great details of the conversation because nobody has to know that. But I will tell you, it never, ever would have happened. I don't want to say it. But did they fear me? I suspect they did.

Either way, there's no way to prove or disprove that, one, any of these conversations or threats actually took place. or two, that either Putin or Xi Jinping abstained from taking military action specifically because they were so scared of what Trump might do. So these audio recordings were obtained by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf. They're the authors of the new book, 2024, how Trump retook the White House and the Democrats lost America. Quite a title. And the timing of this audio release is interesting because Trump is currently struggling to get, it seems, any world leader, let alone Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to do what he wants them to do. For instance, he just threatened new tariffs on nations supporting the anti-American BRICS nations.

Of course, China and Russia are both founding BRICS countries. His State Department has failed to secure the release of Americans being held in Venezuela right now. So that is not exactly a win for the State Department. And despite a freeze from the Pentagon, Trump announced while defense secretary Pete Heggseth was sitting right next to him that the United States would in fact be sending more weapons to Ukraine. Take a look. Are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine? We're going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They're getting hit very hard now. They're getting hit very hard. We're going to have to send more weapons. You have defensive weapons primarily. Yeah, but they're getting hit very, very hard.

So many people are dying in that mess. I'm sorry, I meant to tell you guys to pay attention to Heggseth's face in that clip because he's just sitting there kind of puzzled and nodding along and blinking very erratically because he's just like, what is he saying? Because Hegg Seth and the Defense Department had just put a freeze on sending these weapons to Ukraine and here is Trump saying something else there was. This is not an isolated incident where we're seeing Trump kind of undermine the other people in his cabinet. He's done it with Marco Rubio, his secretary of state. He's done it now in that clip you just

saw with Hegset, his secretary of defense. And he also is seen on camera not really knowing what's going on with his own tariffs. And now he's making all these threats to nations saying I'm going to increase the terrorists if you don't back away from supporting these BRICS nations. So he thinks, I guess in his mind, he thinks this makes him look like a strong man. He's like, don't, don't you do it or else I'm going to put more tariffs on you. It is weak, right? He's having to threaten them. He's trying to scare these people or these countries into submission when the reality is

these countries are going to go, they're going to align themselves with whichever country is the most beneficial for them. So if Trump just had something better to offer these nations, he wouldn't have to threaten them in order to get them away from the allure of Russia and China. So it seems weak, it seems like he has nothing to offer. He also seems kind of like he's being Israel's little puppet there, because the clip that we just saw with him and Pete Hegeseth, that was at a dinner with Benjamin Netanyahu. And allegedly, it was at the behest of Netanyahu that Trump said, yeah, we have to send more weapons to Ukraine.

So, was, what are your thoughts on all of this? It's quite a lot, actually. I mean, you shouldn't really be surprised in terms of Russia's response to Trump being like, member on the campaign, I'm going to end the war in Ukraine on day one. But the bottom line is the Americans, as Donald Trump told, you know, the Ukrainian prime minister have no cards. They've levied every single sanction. They sold Ukraine every single weapon. These sanctions, we were told, the most onerous in the history of the American Empire,

were supposed to cripple Russia and their economy. The opposite has happened. They've actually become more self-sufficient. Their economy has actually grown in the time since the sanctions happened. So you can't give Ukraine anymore. You can give them more weapons, but it's not going to help them. They're losing the war. You can put more sanctions on, levy more sanctions on Russia. It's not going to change anything. They have no incentive to be bullied by the United States here. To be honest, the only thing

that would make sense is total capitulation on the part of Ukraine. And everybody admitting this was all a big mistake. We need to stop. Let Ukraine just keep the territory that it currently occupies and holds and accept the L. Because Russia has no. incentive to capitulate at all. And, you know, his whole thing about, oh, I told him I was going to bomb like Trump, like really admires Richard Nixon, which is hilarious and like obvious in so many ways. And Nixon kind of coined the madman theory during the war in Vietnam where I guess he taught the Viet Cong soldiers would be like scared if he did an indiscriminate carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, you know, just so you guys know they were not. They ended

up winning the Vietnam War despite the madman theory, which is just so stupid. Like, you're using a theory that was proven not to work. But yeah, it's just crazy. You know, of course, the bluster, the idea that China and Russia is scared that you're going to actually bomb them when those guys can strike America at the, you know, I mean the snap of a finger. And Trump would like, you know, over Taiwan and Ukraine, we're going to attack the two biggest military powers in the world.

outside of hours and have freaking California or New York get blown to smithereens because Trump wanted to preemptively attack. Like this is all just nonsense and Trump bluster, but we shouldn't be surprised by now. I think, you know, he's been shown with the tariffs, with the Ukraine war, with the war in the Middle East. He's got his tail between his legs. None of his campaign promises are coming true at all. Yeah, and though he promised 90 deals and 90 days, I believe, correct me, for

If I'm wrong, are we 90 days in? Today is day 90. Yeah, today, it's right now. And I haven't seen the deals. I don't know where they are. Maybe they're coming. He still has a few more hours before the end of the day. But you're absolutely right and about the bluster, right?

Because a lot of what he's saying, now you can't prove it one way or the other. You can't prove that Putin made a certain decision or Xi Jinping made a certain decision based on what Trump said or did or didn't do. And an example of that is China. and Taiwan. Trump said, you know, if you invade Taiwan, I'm going to have to bomb Beijing and maybe Xi Jinping believed him 5, 10%, whatever his number was. But the thing is, the Biden administration also threatened military action against China if they invaded Taiwan. So I don't know if Trump is saying, well, my threat was better than what Biden was doing. It was more acute. It was more, it was more, you know, antagonistic and more inflammatory. But either way, there's a lot of reasons

why Xi Jinping has chosen, could have chosen not to invade Taiwan, at least as of as of yet, right? There's political reasons. There's economic reasons. And also there is the threat of military action from the United States. But that didn't just come from Trump. That's been there throughout the whole Biden administration. So. Anyway, I want to get one last story and before I give you, I hand you guys off to I think you guys have Sharon and Jenk in the next hour. But let's do this last story real quick. Is Superman super woke? James Gunn, the director of the latest reboot movie, said, quote,

Superman is the story of America, an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country. But for me, it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost. Conservatives are upset because Superman is apparently going woke, or maybe the character was inherently woke all along. Well, now, because of what director James Gunn had to say about the character and the film, conservatives are threatening to boycott the movie. They don't love that Gunn said that the story is inherently political because the right loves to pretend that everything is not political.

The movie isn't even out yet, by the way, or I think is it out or maybe it just came out. But unless these specific members of the media are people who got to see advanced screenings of the thing, they don't really know what they're talking about. So here's some of what was said about the movie on right wing social media. So this first one says, I'm going to skip seeing Superman now. Director is an absolute moron to say this publicly the week before release. America is desperate for apolitical entertainment and Hollywood is unable to deliver it. And another one said, the communist is always a communist first. Everything else is second. It's why Hollywood will put out flop after flop,

and yet they still refuse to stop doing this. If you're a movie director, making a great one is not as important as the revolution. I don't even know. See, it's also crazy. Okay, well, James Gunn isn't exactly woke himself. I doubt the left is trying to claim James Gunn. He is a horrible person. He is so horrible that I didn't even want to include his horrible tweets in this segment because I didn't want to read them out loud. He did eventually get fired from Marvel for being terrible. Again, not one time terrible, but like repeatedly terrible. And it's honestly kind of shocking that DC is still involved with him. I think he's pretty entrenched in the studio, but still like it's probably time for them to separate from him. Personally, I was not planning to watch this

movie because I am tired of watching different versions of the same movie over and over and over again. And I am actively boycotting remakes and sequels, especially sequels that come out 20 years after the original. But again, that is a personal thing, although I do invite you all to join me in my personal vendetta against, like, bad movies. But, you know, like they're trying to monetize nostalgia and they're delivering slop in exchange for it. And I resent them for it a little bit. But they're not producing flops just because they can't not be communist. They're going for money and grabs. It has nothing to do with communism.

It's very strange how they always end up at communism. Like the simplest explanation is usually the right one. I don't know what communism has to do with any of this. Also, James Gunn is the one. He got rid of Henry Cavill. He said, no more Henry Cavill. We're going to hire this other guy instead. And I can't say I'm happy about that either.

The people want Henry Cavill and no one will just give us Henry Cavill. Like no hate to Liam Hensworth or whoever this new Superman is. but give the people what they want. I saw the posting and thought it was Henry Cavill, honestly. It's not. It's just like, see, it's always just like a lesser version of what we once had. That's all that we get. I missed the right that used to decry trigger warnings and, you know, hurt feelings.

And, you know, I miss the people that were just so tough that nothing could bother them or hurt them. And Clay Travis is a complete and utter fraud and idiot. And the reason why I say that is because there are no apolitical Hollywood movies and they never were. The fact of the matter is when you're watching Top Gun, what you're watching is propaganda for militarism. That's political. That's not a top gun is not apolitical. They're propagandizing you into loving the military industrial complex, imperialism. American hedge of money. Like, it's literally propagandizing you. So much of our TV and movies

are very, you know, have positive feelings about commercialism and consumerism and capitalism and spending and consumption and all of this stuff. That's political. It's not apolitical. None of the media we consume is apolitical. So not only is Clay Travis an idiot, he's a fraud and doesn't even know anything about the movies that he complains about. I mean, they are kind of dumb, right? Like to say that anything is apolitical is a dumb take because anything can't. It's all a matter of the lens, right? It's what you take out of it.

It's what you see whenever you consume any kind of art or media or whatever. And the thing is, like, you mentioned Top Gun. Somebody actually, there was another criticism. I didn't include it in the story, but there was somebody else who said, you know, why is James Gunn trying to make this story political? Like, why can't we just have something that's like no politics involved like Top Gun? Like

the remake of Top Gun that came out. It was just like a good time. And I was like, are you joking? Like, are you joking? And it's true. I mean, like I can't watch you've got mail anymore. You know, because it's so creepy. CIA agents know how to fight. They speak

eight different languages. They know how they're really good in bed. Like, it's like, give me a freaking break. Like, if that's not CIA propaganda, I don't know what is. I mean, who's saying this? You know, if they're really good in bed, it's like somebody is who's involved in this project, you know, what's in it for you, you know? Matt Damon, he's a killer in those movies. I'm telling you.

And Matt Damon, how many times do we have to save you from space? I'm sick of it. I'm tired of it. Like, I am excited, though. This is off topic, but I am excited for the, um, the Project Hail Mary movie. I read the book. It's so good.

And the movie, the trailer just came out. It looks, it looks good. It looks, I'm like, I haven't been excited for a movie in a long time. And I'm actually excited for this one. And Ryan Gosling, I think, was like a really good casting for that role from like his personality and the book person. Anyway, so that's, we're going to wrap on that note, the first hour. I'm going to hand you guys off. Was, thank you so much for being here.

Do you want to, do you want to plug anything? No, man, it's summertime. We're taking some time off. Just chilling. So no, no plugs. Just go out and enjoy yourselves, folks. Enjoy your families. I love that. Let's let's end on that note. And wheels, I'll see you tomorrow. I'll be back tomorrow. Bye.