The Young Turks - Moscow Mule

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Trump praised Putin’s ‘genius’ incursion into Ukraine. Ukraine has urged its citizens in Russia to evacuate. The U.S. Supreme Court formally rejected Donald Trump’s request to block the release of White House records sought by the Democratic-led congressional panel investigating last year’s deadly attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. An alt-right and Nazi group attended a protest against a communist manifesto reading in a public library that was organized by an African American left-leaning movement. Last year, investors bought nearly one in seven homes sold in America’s top metropolitan areas, the most in at least two decades. Hosts: Ana Kasparian 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. What's up, everyone, welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. Yes, I'm back. I was away at the Munich Security Conference last week, but I'm very happy to be back. And for our members in our post game today, I will be talking a little bit about My experience there, some of the stuff that I saw, experienced just some reflections. And one of the interesting run-ins I had with Nancy Pelosi at the conference, really great

story. So definitely tune in, check it out. If you're not a member, you can become one by clicking on that join button if you're watching us on YouTube or by going to t.yt.com slash join. Not only do you get exclusive members only content, but you help keep us sustainable and independent, which is honestly the biggest gift you can give me personally, and the greatest gift you can give anyone who cares about news that isn't tainted with corporate talking points. With that said, though, let's talk a little bit about today's show. Yes, we're going to talk about Russia and Ukraine. In fact, in the first hour, we will be having a guest on to kind of help us cut through some of the false narratives that we're seeing and

get to the truth of what's really happening in this conflict. Later in the show, John Idarillo will be joining me to make fun of Jordan Peterson's latest venture into the music world. That'll be a lot of fun, so don't miss that. But before we get to it, Trump is making a comeback specifically in the context of defending his daddy Vladimir Putin. So let's discuss. And I said, this is genius.

Putin declares a big portion. of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, that's wonderful. Now, that's Donald Trump doing what he actually does best, defending Vladimir Putin, his lovely Russian daddy, someone who he could not stop complimenting when he was president, someone he couldn't stop complimenting before he became president. And it's kind of incredible because what he's referring to there, what he's responding to is the escalation by Vladimir Putin in this conflict with Ukraine. We'll get to more details about that in just a second.

But he just went on to really puff up his chest and make himself out to be the individual who would have put an end to this conflict from the get go, okay? Before we get to those videos, just a little bit more context. So Putin, this is what he's responding to, Putin recognized the breakaway breakaway Ukrainian regions of Dinesk and Lujansk as independent and use this as a pretext to send peacekeeping forces into the regions in what is a violation of Ukraine sovereignty. President Joe Biden announced sanctions against Russia in response. We'll be talking about that in a lot more detail later on in the show.

We're going to have a historian on, someone who's an expert on this very issue. But for now, let's get to some more sound featuring Donald Trump and his defense of Vladimir Putin. So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're going to keep peace all right.

First off, obviously Putin is not sending troops to Ukraine on a peacekeeping mission. That is ridiculous. In order for it to be a peacekeeping mission, you would need the government to, you know, consent to it, to want to have that happen. Obviously, the Ukrainian government does not want Russia or Putin to send troops across its border. It's ridiculous to refer to it as a peacekeeping mission. I mean, Trump knows that.

I don't think that he's that stupid, right? But listen to what he was suggesting there. Oh, maybe we need that on our border. Yeah, maybe we need another country to invade through our southern border against our will, as long as they claim they're doing it as a peacekeeping mission. Like what? I mean, this guy is incredible. But honestly, that was the least ridiculous part of what he had to say.

during this interview and this was on some random dude show the buck sexton show and he also puffed up his chest and made it seem as though you know he would be the one who could find a real solution to this conflict and the conflict before it would even begin let's watch well what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn't be there by the way this never would have happened with us had i've been in office not even thinkable this would have happened. But here's a guy that says, you know, I'm going to declare a big portion of Ukraine independent. He used the word independent. And we're going to go out and we're going to go in and we're going to help keep peace. You got to say that's pretty savvy. And you know what

the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn't have one for that. Now it's very sad. Okay. So first off, Biden did respond with sanctions. Their sanctions that are supposed to specifically target oligarchs and people in positions of power in Russia, I was actually a little surprised at how mild Biden's response has been in response to Putin, you know, giving this speech, announcing two parts of Ukraine, which have been annexed essentially as independent states. So I thought Biden might actually act irrationally to that and further escalate this conflict, which of course we don't want, okay? we want to find a way to prevent a potential hot war.

So I was happy to see that Biden was willing to be a little more measured in his response to Putin. Now, that is obviously going against the grain from what we've seen from the Biden administration so far in honestly escalating the conflict with Russia. And yes, I will admit Russia has not been innocent. But nonetheless, Putin did something that further provoked this situation. Biden responded in a relatively measured way. But to say that Biden didn't do anything in response is ridiculous. Now let's get to the point that Trump is trying to make here. That of course, there has to be a moment where he airs his grievances about the 2020 election

because he's a loser and can't accept the fact that he's a loser. So he uses any and all opportunities to bring that up, the election. You know, the election was rigged, it was stolen from me. I can't accept the fact that I'm incompetent, I'm a loser, I failed the American people when it came to responding to a pandemic. And they voted me out of office. But then he kind of talks about how he would handle this so much better than Biden did. Now, there's a little kernel of truth to what Trump is saying in regard to preventing, you know, the situation that we're seeing today. And what I mean by that is, remember, Donald Trump did Putin's dirty work for him.

When Congress had appropriated military funding for Ukraine, Donald Trump illegally withheld that military funding until Ukraine would announce some sham investigation into the Bidens. That was the first reason why Donald Trump was impeached. Remember that. So it's not like Trump would be in office and would serve as someone who would counter Putin. He would work along with Putin. He would do the dirty work for Putin. In fact, he was so complimentary toward Putin both before his presidency, during his presidency, and as you guys can see, after his presidency. In 2013, for instance, Trump wondered on Twitter if the Russian autocrat would attend his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and whether the two would become best friends, Putin did not

show up very sad, very sad. In the following years, Trump repeatedly spoke highly of Putin's strategic acumen noted the strong man's intention to rebuild the Russian empire and defended Putin's habit of killing dissidents and journalists arguing that the United States does the same thing. So while Trump likes to posture as like this tough guy, in reality it's not about being a tough guy for Trump. It's all about cowering to his daddy Putin. Like that's just who Trump is. He loves strong men. There's no question about it. In office, he sided with Russia over. U.S. intelligence agencies and accepting Russia's claims not to have been involved in election interference. Trump subsequently claimed without evidence, and at odds with all the

evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence officials, that it was Ukraine. It was Ukraine, not Russia, that had interfered in the 2016 election. In Trump's elaborate conspiracy theory, Ukraine did this in order to frame Russia. So again, there's a little kernel of truth to what Trump says. He would handle it differently. It's just that he wouldn't counter Putin, he would enable Putin, much like he did with the Turks. I mean, Donald Trump enabled Erdogan by pulling U.S. troops out of Syria to pave the way for the Turkish military to come in and slaughter the Kurds, the very individuals who assisted us in taking down ISIS. That's who Trump is. He coweres to strongmen. That's what he loves to do. He loves,

Whoever the strong men daddy is, like the, it's like the soup de jour, right? It's whoever that person is that's dominating the news on any given day, Trump will defend them. It's pretty incredible. We do have another video, and this one is where he elaborates on how he would just be so much better than Biden in responding to this conflict. Let's watch. Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn't be there. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable.

This would never have happened. But here's a guy that says, you know, I'm going to. All right, that was my bad. I actually want to get to this next video, though, because while Trump, again, loves to posture as this strong man, as someone who is respected by the international community, just want to remind you of, What a laughing stock, Trump and his administration was. Here's one example. This was in 2018, as he was speaking before the United Nations, and he made a statement that was so ridiculous that world leaders had to respond the way that you would expect anyone to respond to this insane statement.

Let's watch. In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the administration in the state. history of our country. America's so true. Didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay. It's just it's incredible how much this guy is delusional enough to think that he's somehow better on foreign policy. And let me be clear. I I'm not a fan of many decisions that the Biden administration has made in regard to foreign policy. I've been critical in the way that they've responded to Russia in this entire situation.

They keep claiming that they're approaching this from a standpoint of diplomacy, but that is not the case. Rather than finding ways to really de-escalate this, I've seen escalation day in, day out, like insane claims day in, day out that has only led to provoking the situation that we're seeing now in eastern Ukraine. Okay, I'm not saying that Putin's a good guy. I'm not saying that Putin has done nothing wrong. However, for a party that claims they love to go high when others go low, they're unwilling to bend at all when it comes to some of the provocations that they're engaging in. Provocations that inflame the relationship with Russia.

And I'm not saying we need to be best friends with Putin. I'm not saying that we need to constantly collaborate and work with Russia, although when it comes to the climate emergency, a case can be made that we probably do need to work not only with Russia but with other adversaries, China for instance. But when you consider the fact that you're dealing with a nuclear power, when you consider the fact that Ukraine does not have the military capability necessary to really fight off Russia. And when you consider the fact that Biden's like, I'm not going to send in troops to Ukraine, but I'm going to do all these other things that inflame the situation. I just, I would argue that Biden hasn't handled it well. But to make an

argument that Trump would handle it better is ridiculous. The only thing Trump would do is enable the worst possible motives that Putin might have. It's just the truth. All right, look, We gotta get to our interview. So we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'll be interviewing Derek Davison. He is a historian, also a host of American prestige, an excellent podcast. He's an expert on Russia and this whole conflict with Ukraine. So he'll help us cut through some of the BS narratives that you may have come across both online and cable news.

So stick around, we'll be right back. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Kasparian with you. Let's get to our next story. Well, unfortunately, things have continued to escalate with Russia. Now, the latest reports indicate that Putin is moving in and the invasion into Ukraine is underway. At least, that's what the consensus is in mainstream media. That is what you're likely to see online as well. And this follows news indicating that Putin is ordering troops into two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, known as Donbos, while also declaring them as independent states.

Now, Ukraine has declared a state of emergency in response to this, and President Joe Biden has implemented some new sanctions that are supposed to be targeted toward Russian oligarchs. Now, here is a snippet of Joe Biden's speech responding to Putin's latest actions. setting up a rationale to take more territory by force in my view. And if we listened to a speech last night, and many of you did, I know, he's setting up a rationale to go much further. This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he indicated and asked permission to be able to do from his Duma. From his Duma. Now, Russia has evacuated its embassy in Kiev and Ukraine has also urged its citizens to immediately leave Russia. Also, the Associated Press is reporting that a senior U.S. defense official in Washington said that the Russian forces arrayed along

the Ukraine's border are as ready as they can be for an invasion, with about 80% of them in what the U.S. considers forward positions ready to go within 3 to 30 miles of the border. the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, added that, quote, we still cannot confirm that Russian forces have moved into the Donbos area. I think that's an important part of the story that I think gets lost in the mix if you're watching on cable news or if you're reading a lot of these legacy media outlets. And for anyone who is hoping that there's still a path forward in a more diplomatic fashion, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has announced that he has canceled his meeting with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

That was supposed to take place tomorrow and those talks are apparently not going to happen anymore, which is concerning because we clearly want this to be de-escalated. We want to move forward in a more diplomatic way, but it doesn't seem like that is likely. Now, there's a lot going on. It's kind of difficult to figure out who to believe, who not to believe, who's reporting this. accurately and to help us kind of cut through some of the nonsense, I've brought on Derek Davison, who is the host of the American Prestige podcast, which I highly, highly recommend that you all check out and subscribe to. It's the podcast that he hosts along with a friend of the show, Daniel Bessner. And Derek, I'm grateful for you to take the time to speak with us

today. Thanks for coming on. Sure, thanks for having me. So let's get started with, well, first, let me just say, it's really hard to figure out what is and isn't happening because the people that we unfortunately rely on to report what's going on tweet things like this. So I want to go to this tweet from Julia Ayoff and she put this out there. Her work can be found everywhere, Atlantic, New York magazine. She tweets, this is one of the fundamental differences between American and Russian political culture. As much as the American political system gets crap for being pro. war, it's actually allergic to the thing, thus drone wars, as if drone wars aren't war. They're not war.

They're not war. Yeah. The Russian system is not scared of war, it welcomes it. So when these are the kinds of people that are reporting the news, I have a tough time taking anything that they write or report seriously. So with that said, what is going on? What is the latest news in regard to Putin's actions? in Ukraine? So I mean, what he's done so far, I think you could characterize as an invasion of a

kind. The fact that the U.S. government can't actually confirm that they've placed, they've moved, you know, peacekeepers as the Russians are calling it, quote unquote, peacekeepers into the Donbos is interesting. That suggests things are a little bit even, you know, less developed than a lot of the reporting has suggested. But, you know, if they do move in, and I would expect that they will, they do move in some number of forces to the Dunbas to serve as peacekeepers or occupy the territory, whatever you want to call it, I think we can say that that's an invasion of internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.

But, you know, it's not the nightmare scenario that people have been, you know, the Biden administration and the British government and other sources have been kind of talking about for several weeks now with sieges and kill lists and, you know, tanks, lines of tanks going into Kiev and all of these things. We're not at that stage. We may never get to that stage. I don't want to completely foreclose on the possibility, but that's that's not what it looks like is happening right now. Now for some portion of the left and I consider myself part of this group. I think we get painted as individuals who try to like serve as apologists for Putin. I do not think that's true at all. I think that everyone wants to avoid, you know, Russia

invading Ukraine, but you can maybe approach that in a more diplomatic way instead of kind of escalating both the rhetoric and the actions in this conflict. And so you have U.S. officials claiming that they've been approaching this in a diplomatic way. And my read of that has been, no, that's not actually true, but I could be wrong. So what is your read? What have you noticed in terms of how the Biden administration has approached this issue? Yeah, I mean, I would say they've approached it primarily through the lens of threat inflation. And I think what they think they're doing on some level is closing off options for the Russians by, you know, revealing all of this supposed intelligence that they have about these terrible

things that the Russians are planning to do, which, to my mind, is one of the reasons. Hungry now. Now. What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty, peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating swing by a gas station and get an oh henry today. Oh hungry oh henry that it's been difficult to really assess

what's going on and cut through the media chatter is the media has just sort of dutifully reported all of these things as though it were uh you know happily functioning as an arm of the u.s intelligence community which i think is uh is a very dangerous thing um and is made it really difficult to parse what what is actually happening versus, you know, what they're kind of helpfully parroting out. I would say that they have engaged in the appearance of diplomacy. I mean, you certainly had meetings between Blinken and Sergei Lavrov. You've had meetings, phone calls between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. You've had this exchange of response to the Russians put out a few weeks ago, a list of security demands, some of them a little, you know, beyond the pale or far-fetched.

The U.S. responded to that, and then the Russians responded to that. You've had this exchange of documents, but I don't think there's been a real effort to try and find any common ground or find any place that, that, you know, you could open up a channel for actual discussions that would ratchet tensions down. There's sort of been like an airing of grievances or, you know, like we hear you, but the answer is no without kind of an actual creative diplomatic effort to talk and try to hash out some of the issues that the Russians have put forward. So let's put everything in some context, some historical context, because Russia claims that, you know, the reason why it's acting the way it is is because it feels that, you know, Ukraine. joining NATO would be a threat to their national security, and a lot of people kind of brush that off and dismiss it as if it's ridiculous, that is not a credible claim to make. I have actually given some credibility to that statement, considering what the whole intention of NATO was in the first place, considering that Ukraine shares a border with Russia, considering, you know,

NATO having this big meeting in 2008, where they had passed a resolution to allow both Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO and we saw how Russia responded to that. Russia responded with aggression toward Georgia because it's a big red line for them for these countries to join NATO. But do you feel that these are legitimate security concerns for Russia? Or do you think that Putin is just using it as an excuse to kind of pave the way for aggression toward Ukraine? I don't. I mean, I think that there are legitimate issues here, legitimate Russian security concerns. We can go back to the 90s, the decision, first of all, to leave NATO intact at the end of the Cold War. This is an explicitly Cold War institution, the decision to

not say, okay, the Cold War's over. It's time to move on to something else. And then the decision after that to expand NATO to Eastern Europe against what I think by most credible accounts were promises that were made to first Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin around the time that the Soviet Union collapsed, that NATO would be much more judicious about expanding into territory that had previously been, let's say, part of the Warsaw Pact. We can move to, you know, there are a couple of accounts that you can find. the credible accounts again, I think, one from a former Secretary General of NATO, that Russia explored the idea of joining NATO, that they brought this up. Putin himself when he was, you know, first president in his early, you know, kind of early days as president in 2001, you know,

hinted that he would like to bring Russia into NATO and was told no. And I think that, that in itself, kind of when you have this organization whose motto is pretty much anybody can join and, you tell Russia, no, I'm sorry, you can't, you know, you can't come in. That gives away the game. That kind of lets the cat out of the bag of what this organization exists to do. And then, yeah, as you say, you can go all the way to the 2008 Bukhra summit, which was the summit where really the Bush administration really strong armed, I think the rest of NATO into making this pledge that Ukraine and Georgia would both be basically guaranteed membership when they were ready. And yeah, It's been a series of provocations, moves closer to Russia in places that would be really

vital security interests from a Russian perspective to have, let's say, U.S. or U.K. or Western military forces staged in those countries. So a lot of the media coverage and a lot of the narrative coming from the Biden White House and the State Department is that, well, look, Putin just wants to take over Ukraine. That's what this is about. This is Russian imperialism. And I don't discount the potential of Russian imperialism. However, I do see Putin as a rational actor, and I would argue that his economic interests probably outweigh any interest in taking over Ukraine. I could be wrong. So as a result of what's happening, the deal that Russia previously had with Germany in this Nord Stream 2

pipeline is now put on hold. Obviously that works against Russia's interests. Russia supplies the European Union about 40% of the fossil fuels necessary. Like they're very dependent on Russia. So this does kind of pave the way for the U.S. to export more of its oil to these nations. And I'm wondering if that's possibly some of the motivation behind continuing to escalate things with Russia when we should be de-escalating. But I want to understand, you know, what Putin's real intentions are here. Because if you do a cost-benefit analysis, I would just argue that rationally speaking, invading Ukraine, not the way to go if you're looking out for your own personal interests. Right. So I think there are a couple of things that, a couple of layers

to this. I mean, there is a sort of Russian nationalist component to Putin's ideology. And that he's exhibited in his time as Russian president, he did give a speech on Monday evening before he announced that he was gonna recognize the independence of the two republics that called into question Ukrainian statehood, like the fundamental sort of underpinnings of Ukrainian statehood.

So this is a thing for him. I'm not, I don't wanna discount that entirely. But as you say, there are bigger fish to fry here. There are economic concerns. There are security concerns. I think that primarily sort of the first layer of this is that the Russians have these security concerns about the possibility of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. Just like they did with Georgia, just like they did in the 2008. the 2008 Georgian War, they've now sort of recognized the independence of a couple of the

breakaway republics on the territory of Ukraine, on the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine. And that enables them to, you know, worst case scenario, just sort of keep Ukraine unbalanced, unstable, and therefore not a great candidate for NATO membership. They really weren't, you know, on a candidate for imminent membership anyway. But this, you know, gives Putin a sort of sustained lever to prevent that from happening. I think the other sort of consideration here is that this is a country that feels like without, not without reason, it has been humiliated over the last 30 years. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia kind of inherited the history of that country

in its mantle is this sort of great power, the second pole of the Cold War. global construct. And really, they've been reduced in stature quite a bit. And I think, you know, for Putin, this is also about kind of demonstrating that Russia is a great power. And doing so in ways that are modeled on things that the United States has done, frankly. I mean, he will go back and did, you know, he cites this fairly regularly, did it in 2008 with respect to the Georgian war. And I think has done it again recently to talk about Ukraine. He'll cite the intervention in Kosovo in 1998 when NATO went in. Similar circumstances, claims of genocide, supporting the independence of a country that had hitherto been internationally recognized as part of another country.

And he'll say this is what you guys did. Going into Ukraine like this, he could cite the Iraq war. And basically the message is like, look, I mean, this is what great power is doing. Russia is a great power. You guys do this like the United States and NATO do this kind of stuff all the time. So I'm just playing in the same sandbox. You know, what I also find kind of fascinating about everything is how, you know, the United States, the West is pretty obsessed with preventing the international landscape,

turning it back into a multi-polar, you know, international landscape, right? Right now, the West kind of dominates everything. But with the way the U.S. is handling Russia, I feel like we're kind of pushing Russia in the arms of China. How do you see China factoring in to all of this? Because from what I've seen so far, China's been pretty skeptical with the narrative coming from the U.S. State Department. it. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. You know, Putin visited Beijing early on and after the Olympics started. He and Xi Jinping had a, you know, love fest basically and, you know, talked about their everlasting friendship and the relationship, great relationship between

these two countries. And I think that's, you know, true. Both of them have been kind of shoved together by, you know, opposition from the United States or by kind of hostility emanating from the United States. There are limits to that. I mean, I think, you know, even in this, even over the last few days, you've seen a kind of hands-off response from China. They haven't taken sides overtly here. And China, you know, China's foreign policy in most parts of the world is rooted in outside of its own backyard is rooted in a sort of no problems with anybody philosophy so you know i don't think they want to want to antagonize ukraine necessarily or you know are you're just going to follow some of these some of the more maximalist

interpretations of the things that Putin has said so i you know i think they're going to keep their distance they will probably offer an outlet for the russians if they're not able to sell gas or if the the Russians decide to stop selling natural gas to Europe altogether, which is a possibility in retaliation for the Nord Stream 2 move, you know, they'll probably try to sell more to China to make up some of that lost revenue. I don't think, you know, there are limits obviously to how much gas Russian natural gas China is going to be willing to buy. But I do think, you know, these countries have been brought together to some degree. Again, there are limits, but yeah, I think you're right.

And final question for you, how do you see this all playing out? Do you think that there's still a possibility to de-escalate, or do you think that we're just kind of on this path of escalation, increased tensions, and there's really no end in sight? So, I mean, I think we're in a pattern now where you're going to see a sanctions kind of tit for tat. You'll see Russia respond to what's already been done, maybe cutting off their gas exports to Europe or limiting them in some way. And then, you know, you'll see more waves of sanctions from the West as this kind of goes on. We don't know. And, you know, even now the U.S. is sort of, while acknowledging that this isn't the nightmare scenario, they're still kind of hyping this total war, total invasion scenario. They supposedly have warned the Ukrainians that the Russians are going to make a move on the city of Kharkiv, which would be a, would be a major escalation if it happens. But, you know, again, like every other one of these reports, you just don't know.

I think there is a window for diplomacy here to stop things where they are now in a situation where the Russians have recognized these two republics. They are offering aid and support. They may put peacekeepers in, but they may make. may not necessarily need to go any further than that. But you have to actually talk, and as you alluded to earlier, the United States is sort of dusted its hands and said we're not talking anymore and Blinken has canceled his meeting with Lavrov. There was supposed to be, there was talk of a summit between Biden and Putin, I assume that's probably off now. So I'm not optimistic about the possibility of diplomacy at this point because there simply doesn't seem to be any appetite for it on the U.S. side.

And on the Russian side, again, it's hard to know what the aim is here. They've said that they're recognizing the independence of the Dynetsk and Lahansk on the entire territory of both of those provinces as defined by Ukraine, which would mean inevitably some kind of a conflict because there's a lot of territory in those provinces that the government still controls that presumably. they would intend to take back by force, I guess, but we haven't seen a move in that direction yet. So I think based on that, you know, if the United States would come back to the table and say, let's, you know, let's talk about this. There is an opening where you could freeze things where they are now. But, you know, again, I don't see that that appetite from the Biden administration. Well, we're going to have to see. Derek Davidson, thank you so much for joining us. Everyone, go check out American Prestige, an excellent podcast if you're interested in actually learning the historical context of various political foreign policy issues that we often discuss on this show. Thanks again. I really appreciate it, Derek.

Sure, Anna. Thanks for having me. All right, we got to take a brief break. When we come back, we have some breaking news regarding the criminal investigation into Trump allegedly inflating his assets to commit financial fraud. We'll get to that story and more. Don't miss it. We'll see you then. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian with you. Let's get right to our next story because today pretty close to Showtime, some news broke that was surprising and also pretty disappointing. Let's do it. Two of the leading New York prosecutors investigating Donald Trump have resigned. It was a shocking resignation, we don't have too many details as to why these prosecutors decided to step down from their roles. And yes, this is highly unusual.

Now this is in regard to the criminal investigation into Donald Trump, specifically the investigation looking into potential financial fraud. The allegations were that Donald Trump inflated his assets in order to obtain insurance and loans, and then he also deflated his assets later to dodge taxes on the money that he made. Now the prosecutors who resigned, Carrie Dune and Mark Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Trump. Without Bragg's commitment to move forward, the prosecutors

or yeah, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury. They have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks. Now, one of the people who had testified under oath in regard to Trump committing financial fraud was his own former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. And that is what sparked various investigations into Trump. Now, the one that we're talking about here is the criminal investigation. And since it's a criminal investigation, it has a higher burden of proof, no doubt. But my read of this so far is that the new, you know,

the new district attorney, Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, is pretty quick to give up. And I'm not really understanding why here. So let me explain. So there are a few issues, right, when it comes to doing this investigation and meeting that burden of proof to convict him criminally of financial fraud. Now, you'd have to testify, have some of Trump's lenders testify, but there are issues with that. For instance, Trump's lenders might also not make for sympathetic victims with a jury. The lenders, which made millions of dollars in interest from Trump, conducted their own assessments of his assets. So did the lenders actually do their own assessments of his assets, was there some incompetent in regard to what the lenders did in

processing his applications for loans or for insurance? Prosecutors have thus far been unable to also convince Trump's long-serving chief financial officer to cooperate with the investigation, depriving them of the type of insider witness whose testimony can be crucial to complicated white collar criminal cases. Oh, wow. So it's really hard to, you know, like make a case against someone who might have committed some pretty serious financial fraud. So why don't you just give up?

Like, what? I don't get it. Why not continue pursuing it? It just seems like as soon as we have this new Manhattan district attorney who apparently is afraid of a little bit of a challenge here, all of. of a sudden, you now have prosecutors resigning, and it's now completely unclear whether or not they're going to move forward with this criminal investigation. And I think they should move forward with it, because I think that there is already, you know,

a lot in the public record indicating that Trump has a history of committing financial fraud. But no, I mean, it seems like they're just throwing their hands in the air now and saying, like, I don't know, it's really hard. We can't get this guy to cooperate with us. We're having a difficult time actually doing the legwork necessary. to meet a burden of proof that's high and it's a high burden of proof for good reason. But this is separate from the, you know, civil investigation into the matter. Because there are two different investigations into financial fraud. One is criminal, one is

civil. Now, they had already, by the way, spoken to a longtime Trump accountant. The pause coincides with an escalation in the activity of a parallel civil inquiry by the New York State Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is examining some of the same conduct by Trump. Now that investigation is still moving forward. It is a civil investigation. Seems like she's been able to get important witnesses to testify, including Trump's long time accountant. So again, I'm unclear as to what's really going on with this criminal investigation. These reports are preliminary. The prosecutors who have stepped down have been completely unclear as to why they've decided to step down. They're not giving any comment or elaboration to the

press. And I also want to note that Letitia James recently got approval from a judge to have both Trump and his two adult children testify under oath. So if, if, you know, if, you know, If the criminal investigation is not moving forward because prosecutors are having a hard time getting one accountant to cooperate with them, I think it's pretty weak to cite that as the reason to drop it if they do drop the criminal investigation soon. I mean, Leticia James is fighting to ensure that she can get people to testify under oath, including Donald Trump and his kids. So what's going on with this criminal investigation?

Why can't they also fight to make that happen? Again, a lot of this is unclear. Maybe we'll get some more information in the coming days in regard to what's really going on here. But I'm really not buying that, well, you know, this is just too tough. There's a high burden of proof and so we're just going to drop it. Why? You got to give a better reason. There are other criminal investigations into Donald Trump as well.

We'll see where they go. In recent weeks, for instance, a district attorney in Atlanta asked a judge to convene a grand jury for an investigation to Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Another criminal investigation in New York's Westchester County is examining Trump's financial dealings at one of his company's golf courses. A lot of investigations. And my question is, when it comes to these criminal investigations, is the intention to actually, investigate Trump and carry out justice if he is found guilty of committing financial fraud, or is this just posturing to make it appear as though these prosecutors are being tough on a guy who clearly has a questionable financial history, right? Because I do see a lot of theater happening

in Congress. It'd be a shame if we saw a lot of theater happening with these prosecutors, especially when it comes to serious allegations of financial fraud. The same financial fraud that would throw us in prison immediately, by the way. You think if we were suspected of intentionally deflating our assets to dodge taxes, prosecutors would be like, you know, the burden of proof, it's just too high. So we're just going to drop it? No, they wouldn't do that. So I really want to understand what Bragg's intentions are here.

What's really going on? Because I'm not buying this story as it stands right now. I think there's going to be more information coming out in the coming days that can kind of clarify what's happening with this criminal investigation. All right, with that said, let's move on to our next story, beta male Nazis crying about people who like to read. Yes, yes, there you have a small group of Nazis having a public temper tantrum over the fact that people in a bookshop community library like to read. And look, they had a problem. This is in Rhode Island with the fact that this particular community library has an annual event where a tiny group of them read from the communist manifesto and don't think that the irony isn't lost on me the fact that Nazis who by the way were defeated by Stalin and the communists are whining and

crying about reading the communist manifesto it's it's kind of magical but this is this is who they are there are these sensitive weak fragile pathetic people who can't even handle a tiny of people in a community library reading a book they don't like. Like the very idea, I'm an atheist, like the idea of me going into any type of establishment, any type of library, any type of bookstore to whine and cry about reading, I don't know, some sort of religious doctrine is laughable. Because guess what?

I'm pretty confident in my beliefs. I'm confident in my values. So someone believing something different from me isn't going to make me lose my mind and embarrass myself in a ridiculous temper tantrum, as we saw in that short snippet. Now, to give you some more context before we get to more video, the Red Inc. Community Library, which describes itself as a non-profit community library, reading room and organizing space was hosting a reading of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels for Red Books Day, celebrating the 1007, 74th anniversary of the day the manifesto was published. But this offended the fragile, mental, and emotional state of these white nationalists. At times, the New York Times reports, the group outside the building is heard shouting 131, which refers to the 131 crew or the nationalist social club, which the anti-defamation

league describes the neo-Nazi group with chapters across the US. The group's members see themselves as soldiers at war with a hostile Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race, according to the anti-hate organization. Yes, because that group of men whining and crying outside of a community library is made up of the real victims in society, people who would have just had great lives if it weren't for everyone else ruining it for them, including allegedly the Jews. I mean, how sad and pathetic are you?

Anyway, now we've got more video of what happened. I do want to go to this next clip, which shows what the scene looked like inside this community library as the public freak out was taking place. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our presence of society cannot stare. That was exciting. They kept reading out of the way, and continue doing their thing.

It's unclear who ended up calling the authorities. The cops did show up. Luckily, no one got hurt. And I love the quotes from some of the individual who are at the community library where they're just like, yeah, I mean, look, they're here trying to intimidate us, but we're going to keep doing our thing. And I love that they did that. I love that they weren't intimidated by these clowns, because no one should be intimidated by these clowns. That's all they are, pathetic, weak, fragile boys. They're just boys.

And again, just the idea of losing your mind over a tiny group of people, by the way, there were six to seven people inside this community library reading the communist manifesto. Imagine being so pathetic and having so much time, like so much time to waste away in losing it over six to seven people reading the communist manifesto. Think about how pathetic that is. Like these people need to be mocked relentlessly because of how sad they are. So luckily cop showed up, no one got hurt. ended without incident and the people who were there, the six to seven who were there decided

to keep doing their thing and they should. Because whether you agree with the communist manifesto or not doesn't matter. What does matter is fostering an environment where people can explore what they want to explore. Fostering an environment that allows people to be confident in their beliefs. And you know, these guys are so, they're so insecure, like that's the thing that stands out to me. So insecure in what they believe that they have to put a stop to others wanting to explore other ideas. That's what that is, that's what you're seeing right there.

That's weakness, it's fragility, it's just pathetic behavior. It really is, there's nothing more to say about it. So good on this community library, I love that they're doing their thing. And these clowns, again, should be mocked relentlessly. With that said, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we have John Idaurola joining us, darling. And I will be annoying him with my weird Anadelvi accent. Okay. We'll be right back. Come right 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. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.