The Young Turks - Mueller Sets Trump's Record Straight

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Mueller is talking publicly about his investigation. Cenk Uygur, Ira Madison, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, well, the Young Turks, got an awesome show ahead for you guys. Thank you for John, Iroll.

Iron Madison. I'm great. All right. Ira does a podcast on Quirkid Media. It's called Keep It, so it gives you a sense of what you should do with it. Okay. So Ira, it's pop culture and politics? Yeah.

All right, that sounds good. I like it. I like both those things. We do both those things as well from, we used to do a lot more pop culture, not as much anymore. But then we got a pop culture guy who's a president, who's a reality show. So yeah, you know. I don't know, does that mean your podcast?

just got taken over by politics? Sometimes we will not talk about what he's doing. Okay, what the Orange Band is doing. All right, got you. Okay. We can just talk about like Chernobyl, if you want, or something. Yeah, something more cheery. Something more cheery.

I just started watching Fleabag. We can start talking about that if you want. Fleaback's great. It is, it is. Yeah. So, yeah, people are buzzing about Fleabag. I don't even, where is it on? Amazon Prime?

Yeah, it's just very funny. Yeah. All right, sounds good. Okay, what do we got in the news? We got Mueller, he did a press conference, I've got a lot of opinions. I had so many opinions, I immediately did a YouTube live, but we've got more details for you guys. Nancy Pelosi, you're gonna be shocked, I hope you guys are sitting down. It turns out does not agree with me, it's gotta be a first.

So we will get to her diagnosis of this. But speaking of diagnosis, we also have some fun, interesting topics for you guys later in the program, and some disastrous ones as usual. We've got a, in the second hour we've got Living While Black, apparently now you can't go fishing. dangerous things like mowing the lawn, barbecuing, now fishing, et cetera. But one that might be fun in a weird obscure way is we're going to discuss slash debate whether burnout at work is a real thing. I imagine John is going to take the position that it is.

I am going to take the position that it is not. Then it turns out you're going to take exactly the position I knew you would take then. So we'll talk about that. I can make it to that point in the show. Anyway. Okay, soft. All right, here we go. Okay.

All right, now we're gonna have nothing but fun. But all right, let's start with Mueller. Let's see we should impeach somebody. Okay, let's do that. Today, for the first time, Robert Mueller has actually spoken publicly about his investigation and about the Mueller report. He did not speak for very long, that's true, but he did speak. And he touched on a number of different aspects of the report that some people didn't read.

I would say the vast majority of the country, it's fair to say, did not read, and most of the rest of the country have forgotten since it came out. But he touched on a couple important points in terms of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and all of that. But we start off with conspiracy. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well

as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. Just briefly before we jump into the substantive analysis, I do want to just recognize he is speaking for the first time, which we were not expecting, yesterday in the show we asked him to. No big deal. Yeah, I'm not saying we moved Mueller to do that, but I mean, look, we made a big deal out of it.

Yeah, and then we said we questioned his patriotism because he was putting his pride of like, hey, I don't want to be involved in politics because it would offend my sensibilities over being truthful to the American public and making it clear. Did we actually move him to? No, we did. Okay, anyway, but we gave it our best shot, and there he is today. All right, now on to the substance. So, at least I can go home to my dad, by the way.

My dad kept saying, why you don't get Robert Mueller to speak right away? Dad, mission accomplished. Okay, so anyways, now on to the substance. This is very important because on two grounds. One, if you thought that he had colluded during the election, here is Bob Mueller saying very clearly insufficient evidence. That doesn't mean that he didn't do it, but it means they wouldn't have tried him. They wouldn't not only have convicted him, they would not have even brought charges against them. So if you were in that camp, I think that you feel pretty vindicated about insufficient evidence on the what is really what we've all called collusion during the election.

Okay. Now that is going to be an important juxtaposition to what he says next. What were your thoughts are? Yeah, you know, I wish he had talked earlier. I feel like everyone wants that, you know, this press conference happened. It was like there are all sorts of people looking for press conferences every day. Sarah Huckabee gives one all the time when no one wants to hear her speak, you know. But yeah, I mean, it's pretty much what you expected, right?

If you had read even parts of it or, well, what wasn't redacted, or anyone else, or anyone actually reporting on the actual report, you would know that what Mueller is saying is sort of what we already knew. I think the people who are acting surprised are people who were paying attention to reporting on what people were saying about the report instead of actually listening to what we do about it. Or some of them might have been a little bit confused because they paid attention to Barr's memo about the report.

Of course. And just trusted that whatever he put in there would be true, turn out to not be the case. But nothing there about the conspiracy was anything that we didn't know. He turns in this next clip to obstruction of justice. And here he does reveal something pretty significant that it would have been amazing to know far earlier. We're to touch based on that in just a sec, but here he is talking about obstruction of justice. The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct

the investigation. We conducted that investigation and we kept the office of the acting attorney general. apprised of the progress of our work. And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision.

It explains that under long-standing department policy, A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. The special counsel's office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. You could have considered saying that a year and a half ago, I think. It seems, I mean, there'd been debate along the way about how seriously he would take that memo.

There, he referred to the content of the memo or the decision as determining constitutionality, which is, I would say, a very serious attachment to that. Mr. Mueller, you finally talk, and now he just wants to cut in on everything. Anyway, so there, he's taking it so seriously that he's saying it would be unconstitutional to levy charges against the president, which I don't believe that the constitutionality that has ever been tested. I wouldn't necessarily want this Supreme Court to do it. But he was, there were never going to be charges, there could never have been charges.

Why was that not stated a year ago publicly? Yeah, so I wanna touch on that too, but I don't wanna lose track of the money quote here. He said in that clip that you just watched, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. Now, so he's saying on the collusion and what he calls conspiracy, because that's a legal word for it, insufficient evidence. On obstruction, if we had insufficient evidence, I would tell you, what does that mean? That means he has sufficient evidence.

So why is he not charging him if he has sufficient evidence? One is what John just referred to, which is that he thinks he's not allowed to charge a sitting president. Okay, we're gonna get to the implication of that in a second. The second reason is he says, even if I thought that he should be charged, he should be charged, if he weren't the sitting president, I couldn't tell you that because that would bias people against the president who would not get a chance to necessarily defend himself in court because we can't charge him.

Now, if you're following along logically, that's very clear, completely easy to understand, especially if you're a lawyer. He's saying, yeah, he definitely did it. I'm just not legally allowed to charge him. I'll tell you who is in a second, right? But unfortunately, not everybody's a lawyer, and now everybody clearly understands that, and it allows for the Republicans and Donald Trump to obfuscate. So, he says, I'm not charging him on this. Now this one, I'm not saying anything, because I'm not allowed to say anything, but here's 11 instances of him obstructing justice.

So the Trump people come out and go, see, case closed, literally, that's what Trump said. Case closed, obviously didn't do it. No! And to John's point about framing, why didn't we have a discussion throughout that Mueller was never going to charge Trump? The question was, and that since he thinks that Department of Justice cannot charge Trump, who's the only, what is the only body that actually can bring Trump or any president to justice if they break the law? Congress. So the entire time that Mueller was deliberating, we should have been having a conversation about will Mueller, will Mueller? give enough evidence for Congress to impeach Donald Trump.

So now in the Mueller report, and we told you this when it came out, it says the correct next government body to act is Congress. So now we'll get to Pelosi and how she punted and she won't do her job and the total dereliction of duty. But here I want the audience to be at least crystal clear. This is basically Mueller coming out and saying what Rashida Taleb said, impeach the mother. Okay, he's saying, it's not my job, it's Congress's job. And I just told you he broke the law 11 times on obstruction of charges, obstruction

of justice. If you're paying attention, crystal clear. If you're trying to confuse the issue, then, you know, then he gave you plenty of room to go, well, hey, he didn't say he's charging him, ha ha. So what's you take on an eye here? I mean, so this is sort of the problem with a lot of politics right now, you know, and why So many people get frustrated with them. Because as you said, a lawyer hearing that would say, oh, okay, I totally get this.

But for most people listening at home, they have been hearing about the Mueller report for like ever. And you're like, this is going to be the report that says whether or not the president committed a crime, we're going to find out the truth. What is actually happening is the fact that no one seems to want to deal with the fact, even the media wants to deal with the fact that Republicans know that most people want to do. want to still play with a level playing field when it comes to politics. And so with Mueller just doing his job, Barr and other people, you know, everyone who's sort of in Trump's land can come out and they can spin it to, so there's no collusion, you know? And part of it too was just, I feel like framing so much of this as are we finding out about collusion?

You know, because I feel like one of the largest parts about this is the obstruction of justice. And that's what we should really be going after for impeachment. Yeah, and we're not going to go through all of the instances of obstruction of justice, which are very clear in the Mueller report, and you should have already read it at this point. But again, there's no definition of obstruction of justice that means anything that he hasn't violated at this point. Like if he is allowed to get away with the things that he got away with and it does not count as obstruction of justice, there can never be an investigation of a president that's meaningful in the future because they can just fire everyone involved. with it. They can not testify themselves. They can tamper with witnesses, threaten witnesses,

dangle pardons in front of witnesses, all of the stereotypical, most obvious instances of obstruction of justice. He did that. That is why we got to this point where Robert Mueller is winking and nodding at the fact that Congress needs to step in. But he does, in his remarks, go a little bit more into the DOJ policy on charging and which body would actually pursue the next step in this clip. First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation, of a sitting president because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process

other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially, it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. So he's obviously saying there, he did it. I'm not allowed to charge him, and I think he'd be unfair to say he did it without charging him because he wouldn't be able to defend himself. But that's obvious to anyone who's logical and paying attention.

But so what he's not being fair to is the American people. The American people thought he was going to come out and say, did he do it or didn't he do it? As I were pointed out earlier, right? And Mueller says, well, look, I want to preserve, you know, my reputation. And I don't want to be attacked by Democrats or Republicans. So I'll do this punting thing where I'll say, look, I gave you 11 cases where he clearly violated the law. And so it's up to you now, and I'm not going to interpret it for you. Well, I wish that American people were that sufficiently logical and understood exactly

what's happening. If you watch the Young Turks, you do, if you saw it there and you see that explanation, it's clear to say. But one of the things that is true of American media today that apparently Mueller does not understand enough or doesn't care about is, I was talking to another reporter today. And I said, well, obviously, he said, you know, clearly he implied that he did it. Why, you can't say that, you can't say that. No, but wait a minute, you're being unfair to the truth.

The truth is he laid out 11 instances where he obstructed justice and says, I can't charge him for it, but somebody, and I'm not going to tell you whether somebody should do act on it. But I'm telling you that when I find insufficient evidence, I tell you. And here, I'm not telling you that. God damn it, it's so clear except the way that Mueller stated it doesn't allow the neutral report. who are not attached to reality and facts to go, hey man, nothing I can do about it, nothing I could do about it, which then the bad guys like Trump, et cetera, jump in and go, I'm cleared. Yeah. When he's actually saying the exact opposite.

You know, it reminds me a lot of recently, you know, we had that whole Jesse Smollett thing in Chicago, right? You know, and a lot of the reason why the special prosecutor, the Chicago, dropped those charges was just because it would have been hard to prove that case in the public opinion after you basically had Robin Manuel and like the head of the police in Chicago going on news programs and basically saying he's guilty, he's guilty without providing any sort of evidence. And I think that's basically where Mueller is now.

You can't legally sort of taint, you know, public opinion, you know, otherwise it's going to turn back against you. So I hear you on then, that's I think what he's referring to when he says it wouldn't be fair, right? On the other hand, it's also not fair to leave the issue in any way unclear. We had you work on it for two years so you can clear it up, not so you can make it less clear. And so, look, again, no honest person that actually understands the issues would come away from that thinking that he was cleared on obstruction, they would think the exact opposite.

And no one, if anyone says that he's exonerated on obstruction, that's a clear lie. Flat out lie, and there's no dispute about that. And just a couple last points to make of this. One, another reason that it's convenient that he is speaking today, and we just had our conversation yesterday, is that we went into whether that Office of Legal Counsel guideline was directing Mueller, and we speculated that it was pretty clear from the Mueller report, that Barr's statements that it had nothing to do with it were a lie that we now knew that. And today, I mean, you saw the videos that was borne out today, that Barr had been lying about

the fact that he was saying, no, the Office of Legal Counsel guideline has nothing to do with it. Even if that wasn't there, Mueller still would not have pressed any charges against Donald Trump. And this, this again, I mean, this is like the seventh time he's been proven to be a liar on the subject. But the people came out immediately after the bar memo came out and decided I'm going to tie my reputation of that guy's reputation and imply that anyone that besmirches him is clearly crazy because of his amazing reputation of Washington just looks more and more ridiculous as the days go by. We're referring to William Barr.

Exactly. And one other thing too, just to bear in mind, like we're gonna speculate, I think after the break about what we do, where we go from here. But in terms of where Mueller goes from here, he's going from here, actually. He's resigned from the Justice Department, and in terms of him like testifying, whether publicly or privately, you know, what can you expect from that? Well, he said, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak about this matter. I am making that decision myself.

No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter. And he also says that even if he does testify, he will not go beyond anything that is revealed in the Mueller report. So from the point of view of Robert Mueller, while there might still be valued to him speaking, it will not be in terms of revealing new information to us. Okay, I mean, first of all, he doesn't get to decide that. If the House subpoenas you, you must comply with the subpoena. So that's a sad day for you that you'd rather be fishing and again preserving your precious

reputation according to your interpretation, right? But if you get a legal subpoena, you're a lawyer, you figure it out. You have to respond to it. Not if your Hope Hicks. Exactly. But Mueller is not in the- Existential question. Yeah, Mueller is not part of the Trump team. So if he says, oh, Trump told me not to do it, I mean, then you lose all respect for him.

So, and I'm not, look, there's nothing wrong with his investigation. And his conclusion is clearly that he, that the president did the destruction of justice, which is a very serious felony. It's just the only issues are with the framing. If he allowed for questions, which he didn't, one perhaps the most relevant question would have been what he said in the report, but I'd like to have it be clarified in that press conference that everybody was paying attention to. So if the Department of Justice cannot act and a president has committed a crime, who should act?

And there's a very clear answer to that, Congress. Because you can't say nobody can act. What if the president came out on Fifth Avenue? He shot someone and killed him. I said, ha, ha, I'm a president. The Department of Justice cannot indict a sitting president. Mueller just told you it's unconstitutional. So I get to, oh, you know what?

Somebody else step up. I'm going to kill the next guy because I'm totally. above the law. Well, Mueller would say if you ask him about that, well, no, no, no, no, no. There is someone who could act. Who is it? Congress. So, which then leads to Nancy Pelosi.

We'll talk more about it later in the program, but I'll tell you right now, when Nancy Pelosi says she's not going to act, she's saying I'm putting politics over rule of law, over principle, and I'm going to let him slide. I'm going to let the criminal go. And so at this point, Mueller has made it crystal clear, next stop, Nancy Pelosi, balls at court and today one more time, she said, no, I won't do it. And so the resistance has totally turned in to the assistance. So maybe she should apply to work with the White House.

I've got more anger about that a little bit later in the program. So let's take a break, let's talk about her, we'll talk about the Fox guys. Yeah, I mean, look, it's so clear a lot of the Fox guys are like, you did it, right? So we'll show you the tape and you'll see for yourself. So come right back, we'll do that next. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

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

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on a young Turks, lots of comments for you guys and lots of updates.

So first of all, Jordan Klepper is going to be on the show on Thursday, so don't miss that. And we also are going to have a conservative on who thinks we should do impeachment. We're going to have a lot of yes on Thursday. And Dahlia Lithwick, who is one of the top legal reporters in the country. She also thinks there should be impeachment. except Nancy Pelosi thinks there should be impeachment. Okay, ShopTYT, by the way, has got some sort of thing for you guys. How's that for a tease?

Okay, so Pride Months two days away. That's why we've got the rainbow TYTs going for you guys. I have the one on the left at home, shopty.com. So the reason I pause is, I don't know if there's a sale. You don't need a sale. Go to shopt.com. Show pride, okay? I haven't seen that right one.

That might be new. Yeah, I think the right one on the right snoop. Okay, so now let's go to your member comments. Eclectic, Mr. Chilini says, how many minutes into the show will it be until Jenks says, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My guess is six minutes and thirty seconds, you are way off, no, but fair enough guess. No way says, I think Mueller is hiding behind policy. This just seems like buck passing to me.

Michael Rose says, hey, the TYT app now has airplane casting, woo, woo, woo, indeed. You're right, you can do air. You can do casting, we're all over your TV, we're on Pluto, Zuma, Roku, or you can just take the TYT version, TYT.com, and aircast it, or I just said aircast it, airplay it or cast it. And apparently this is what you do when you do that, I've become my dad. You can go on internet or aircast. Anyway, Alexis says, Ira on TYT, I'm legitimately screaming, this is my dream team. Oh, that's very nice.

I like so. Okay. All right, I get a lot more, but we gotta go. So, oh, I'll give you one last one. On Twitter, Melinda goes, Ira! That's what she wrote. I don't think that was about us. I think that was about Trump tweets effects on the stock market.

Yeah, well, that also actually happened. Anyway, all right, what's thanks? Trump, unfortunately. So with Robert Mueller finally speaking about his investigation, we turn now to one of the key people in the investigation. Donald Trump, what did he think about the appearance today? He said, nothing changes from the Mueller report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore in our country a person is innocent.

The case is closed. Thank you. I agree with him, nothing changes in the Mueller report. Please read the Mueller report. All right, so let's go through the usual stuff. First of all, for two years, Donald Trump said, Wedge hunt, 18, 19, 17, angry Democrats, whatever number he was making up that day. Then he comes out and says, full exoneration.

The witch hunt, and which happens with witch hunts all the time. They'd get together, they'd say, okay, you're a witch, right? And they'd bring the jury together, they'd be like, oh my God, they're not witches. No one, none of them are witches. Okay, that's not really how witch hunts work. So he claimed total exoneration. Today, we have the sleight of hand. Insufficient evidence means that you don't charge somebody, ha ha, by the way, he's not

even saying that he didn't do it. It's just like, insufficient evidence, got you. In our country, a person is innocent. Right, in our country, a person is innocent. Not in reality, okay. But that's a great point here. He's talking about his own case ending as if he's the beginning to a law and order episode. Yeah.

He's no personal attachment. Right. But the main line there, of course, is he said insufficient evidence on collusion. He did not say insufficient evidence on obstruction. He said plenty of evidence on obstruction. So nice try. So he obviously doesn't think that this appearance should be like the prologue to impeachment proceedings.

But there are people on Twitter who do think so. You might recognize some of them from currently starring in the Democratic primary contest. That's a bunch of them. And so we've got Seth Moulton and Kirsten Gillibran and Corey Booker and Elizabeth Warren and Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. I'm not sure if any of the others have yet tweeted specifically about it. We tried to get all of them. But that's seven of the 62 candidates.

So it's getting up there. It's become a more popular position. They're less scared of it. When Elizabeth Warren, not too long ago was vocally in favor, I believe in a town hall in favor of impeachment, it was considered kind of out there. others have now caught up to her, as well as some who are not running for president. So Alexandra Acosta Cortez had tweeted, Mueller is playing a game of taboo with Congress. His word is impeach.

See, you're looking for the word impeach. That's just that tweet is just made specifically for me. But anyway, yeah, and so that's sort of what we were getting into in the last block, that he can't specifically say exactly what has happened and what needs to happen, but if you were paying attention, if you have a functioning brain, it's pretty clear what's going here. And of course, Justin Amash has said the balls in our court Congress. And Justin Amash is a right-wing Republican congressman who has said, what are we, who are

we kidding? The Mueller report clearly lays out crimes. He's got 11 cases of obstruction of justice. What did you need? 12 cases? Right? So all reasonable and even some unreasonable people agree. And the only ones who are holding out, of course, is that are the Trump guys and, oh right,

Nancy Pelosi. I, is she, what do you think? Is she going for vice president of Trump or secretary of state? What does she want? Or just assistant, what do you think that Pelosi's going for here? But now the presidential candidates are fairly clear. It took them long enough. I mean, why didn't Mueller have to say it?

It was in the report. That's why I give Elizabeth Warren credit for leading the charge. Some of them had, and last night's town hall, I mean, she just asked about Kamala Harris also was in favor of beginning proceedings. Yes. Look, and there's layers to it. And so I would say in this category, Elizabeth Warren is the best because she said, look, it's a matter of principle. I don't care what the politics is. So that she had the right reason. She was the most aggressive about it, the most correct about it. And then people like Kamala Harris and actually Julian Castro is very aggressive about it too.

I really liked a lot of what he said about it. And he had very good reasoning to back it up. And you can tell who's hedging and being careful and who's being more aggressive. So great credit to Castro, and then you get to the other end, and Biden goes, I'm with Pelosi, man, I don't even want to do anything. If I get an office for four years, I'm not going to do a damn thing, right? So that's Biden in a nutshell. But to be fair, Bernie Sanders has been mediocre on this issue. So he's like, well, if this, if that, then we should do impeachment.

I don't think it's a, look, if Bernie Sanders said, hey, I'm too busy passing Medicare for all and Green New Deal and all these things that I don't have time for impeaching Trump. And he's in the Senate, so they could be working on that stuff, that would be one thing. And he would have credibility in that grounds, whereas Pelosi does not. But they're not doing that either. So they're not doing it in the House, they're not doing it in the Senate. So you get all the time in the world. So I don't love Sanders' position on this.

He's barely getting there now. Yeah. Any folks there? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's obvious that even the people on Trump side are sort of playing the media game, you know, when Sarah Sanders made her statement, she says that there's no collusion and there's no conspiracy, but when she talks about obstruction, she says the Department of Justice agrees that there's no obstruction. You know, so like she's throwing it back to bar again, you know, and it's once again,

you know, this idea that if someone's gonna do something, you just sort of have to do something. And what confuses me the most is when you talk about like Nancy Pelosi or something, you know, like sort of what politics they may be playing about can we go for impeachment or can we not go for impeachment? It seems like from most polls that keep coming out, most of the American public would be in favor of impeachment. And you have most of the 2020 candidates in favor of it. So I just so don't get the hedging.

I don't get what they're afraid could happen if impeachment proceedings again. We also, we can't say for sure, like we have an idea from polling of what the American people think, but we don't have an idea of what the American people think when the Democratic Party and its leadership have been unified making the case to them. Because we haven't seen that yet. We have to speculate. But imagine the Democratic Party being unified. Yeah, and imagine the Democratic Party actually fighting for you.

I know it seems unimaginable. And actually making their own case rather than Trump's case, unthinkable. All right, so now let's turn to them. Yeah, so, well, and others around them. What Mueller was saying this morning was fairly clear. Clear, not just to people on the left, but people on the right as well, including on Fox News. Brett Baer had this to say. By the tone and tenor of those remarks, as he laid out his case wrapping up this report,

this was not, as the president says time and time again, no collusion, no obstruction. It was much more nuanced than that. I haven't watched any other Fox news today. I'll just imagine that, you know, on through to Sean Hannity, they agree with him. No, but Napolitano, as usual, came out and was clear. Again, look, we guys, don't get confused Napolitano for anybody's liberal or progressive. And so he's been saying a lot of things driving me crazy lately. That's because we're two Americans who disagree.

That's the way it's supposed to be, okay? But on this issue, we do agree. And he said, well, Mueller said that there was evidence that he did obstruction. It's like, what else do you need? He said, there's no evidence or not enough evidence on collusion, but plenty of evidence on obstruction. So you've got a couple of people on Fox News going, look, guys, I don't know, I can't. There's a bridge too far, right?

I can't twist his words to mean the exact opposite. So I'm gonna tell you what he actually said. So we'll have to see tonight on, but you know what Hannity is gonna say in Lou Dobbs. Lou Dobbs is gonna say, arrest them all. Who, Trump, the guys who committed the crimes? No, the people who pointed out the crimes. But literally, literally that's what they say. And they're now starting investigations.

And we'll see if Trump's team, Trump has told William Barr to start investigations on everyone who investigated him, I'm sure that they'll be just as careful as Robert Mueller. And then once they have information, they'll be just like Nancy Pelosi and say, well, I don't know, how is it going to play out? I just want to be careful, so I probably won't do anything. Or with almost no evidence, they'll barge in and start to lock people up. So the disparity here is out of control. But for the moment being, the important takeaway from this is whether it's Justin Amash,

Brett Bear, Napolitano, even the right wing, and Bear, all those guys are a million miles from Progressive, a million miles from moderate. Even those guys are saying, he obviously did it. And so why don't we play a game now? So we're gonna see how strong you can seem like you're being without actually promising to do anything, and the first contestant is going to be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Gerald Nadler. And so here's what he had to say today.

With respect to impeachment question, at this point, all options are on the table, and nothing should be ruled out. What special counsel Mueller said loud and clear today for the American people is that President Trump is lying when he says no collusion, no obstruction, and that he was exonerated. If Mueller wanted to exonerate the president from having committed the crime, he would have said so. Instead, and he says he would have said so. With regards to impeachment, will you then move forward at a particular time? He'd say it's on the table, but what exactly does that move specifically? We are following through in our investigation. We will continue to do so,

and we'll make decisions as they seem indicated. Okay, we're following procedure. You know, we're going to keep to the timeline, and we expect it will conclude sometime after the sun has expanded in size and consumed the earth. So about seven. And a half billion years. Something like that. Yeah. So look, reporting from people inside, and sometimes literally Democratic congressmen will go on TV like Steve Cohen didn't say, the overwhelming majority of the Democrats on the House

Judiciary Committee want to impeach. They think the obvious is, that the evidence is obvious, and that if we don't act, it'll seem like we're letting the president be above the law. I think that Nadler, based on the reporting I've seen, actually agrees with that. But Pelosi, who is the Speaker of the House, will not let anyone take action. Will not let anyone actually be a Democrat. Will not let anyone oppose Trump. Remember what he was called the resistance?

Hilarious. So now it's the assistance, of course. And Nadler here has to go up there and go, Trump obviously did it, he was lying about not doing it, and Pelosi tells me I have to do nothing but wait. And so that's what you just saw there. So let's go to the chief assistant for Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and let's see what she has to say. Let me just say that I'm very proud of our House Democrats.

They've been very, shall we say, conscientious about how they've reached their decisions. And I think it's like 35 of them out of 238, or maybe it's 38 of them out of 238 have said that they wanted to be outspoken on impeachment and many of them are reflecting their views as well as those of their constituents many constituents want to impeach the president but we want to do what is right and what gets results what gets results and we have to remember so yes there are some and the press makes more of a fuss about the 28th and the 200. Okay, so first of all, if she's telling the truth, okay, fine, there's 200 of them who want

to help Donald Trump, who say, let's cover up Donald Trump's crimes. So Nancy Pelosi, if she's correct, then she just threw her whole, most of her Democratic colleagues under her bus. Another set of group, a group of people that she threw under our bus was her voters. She said, oh, my voters want to impeach, but we have to do what's right. You understand the words that you just used? You said, oh, like, my idiot rabble-rousing voters who I basically despise want to impeach. But I'm not going to listen to them.

I'm going to do what's right. So you framed it as not only are your voters wrong, but they're almost immoral, and that the bastion of morality is Donald Trump. Because you will not impeach him, because that is the right thing to do. That is as bad as you could possibly imagine. I mean, the leader of the Republicans couldn't do more damage to the Democratic Party than Nancy Pelosi just did. And she also says, I'm gonna do what gets results? What results?

On what? What are you doing? She always says like, oh, I've got other priorities, really? You're against Medicare for All, you're against Green New Deal, you couldn't even get $15 minimum wage pass. I thought you were a master legislator, what the hell's going on? You got plenty of time on your hands. What are you doing if you're not doing impeachment?

Go ahead. We'll wait. Apparently we'll wait a long, long time. You're not doing anything otherwise anyway. This is at best, cowardice, at best. All right, that's my thoughts. Over to you, Ira. Well, I mean, I thought the magenta outfit was lovely.

So, you know, I think that for Pelosi, you know, when she's thinking about what will get, you know, these quote, quote, results. You know, she's probably thinking, you know, about 2020, probably thinking about, you know, the Senate, probably thinking about who's running for president, you know, and like, you know, I feel like she just thinks that impeachment now probably will throw a lot of that into disarray. You know, and I get it, you know, sometimes people don't want to, you know, throw a lot of plans that they might have laid out into chaos by, you know, sort of introducing something new. to it, but you know, when you have people like Elizabeth Warren who, you know, I strongly

agree with and I think it's doing so many amazing things right, you know, talking about how she doesn't care, politically what happens, you know, we should move forward with impeachment. I think those are people who we should be listening to. Yeah. Yeah, so look, I want to address a couple of quick points that the Pelosi team makes. One is they believe that it's the 1990s, it is not, I just wanted to correct that for the record. They believe that Donald Trump is just like Bill Clinton. He's not, they're two different human beings, I'd like to correct that for the record.

Bill Clinton at the time was incredibly popular, Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular, so your sense of time and politics is miserable, you don't really know what you're doing. I mean, to go back to a cliche thing of like, oh, impeachment didn't work for the Republicans in the 1990s, when they did it based on absolutely nothing against an incredibly popular president. Oops. So you don't know anything. So let's move on past that. Number two is, she says, oh, well, the Senate, this is the number one thing they do.

The Senate won't convict, so what's the point? The point is that you do your job and then you worry about whether they do their job. And by the way, when you have impeachment proceedings in the House, the whole country will see all the evidence. The 11 times that he obstructed justice according to the Mueller report, do the American people know about that? Almost not at all. Why?

Because you never brought it up. You never talk about it. Maybe I know this is absolutely unthinkable to Nancy Pelosi. Maybe if you made your own case, the reality is of course she does. She represents the corporate donors. She's making their case. Hey, I got the tax cuts already. Trump's awesome.

And I'm raising a lot of money if I'm a Democrat off of Donald Trump. That's what this is about. Anyway, but if you actually made the Democratic case, you'd have a better shot. Then the American people go, oh, I see. Right now they say Trump, they see Trump going, I'm innocent, case closed. They see Pelosi saying, hey, the right thing to do is not to impeach Donald Trump. What do you think they're going to conclude? Or what if you said, hey, you know what, Donald Trump is wrong?

This was a crime, and we're going to investigate it, and we're going to, you know, and make sure that there are consequences attached to it, then perhaps your side would have a fighting chance, but you don't want them to have a fighting chance because you're a natural born loser. And then Washington tells me that Pelosi's a master legislator. Is this what a master legislator does, just lies down like a floor? For Donald, frickin' Trump? It's not like we're dealing with FDR here.

It's not like, or even Reagan, I had got no respect for him. But at least he was in his time popular and had some degree of strength. Donald Trump is the weakest, saddest, most pathetic, most unpopular president we've ever had in our lifetimes. And you're still laying down for him. That's unbelievable. And the Senate, you know what would happen? The Republicans would then be put to a decision. And the decision would be one of two things.

Either I'm going to say, in the face of overwhelming evidence, I vote no, I vote in favor of criminality. I want to let the criminal go. And then they're on the record on that, Nancy. Did you think about that? Did you think, hey, maybe that might hurt their chances in their state? Or they're going to convict. But you'll leave that up to them. What's the point of saying, oh, I surrender to the Republicans in the Senate?

I surrender. Where the, is the master legislator that I hear these idiot mainstream media guys constantly talking about? She's so amazing. Really? Really? Lying down to Trump, kneeling, bending Anita Trump is amazing? That's the master legislator?

Okay, and the most important part of all this guys is precedent. If Nancy Pelosi says under no circumstances, which is exactly what she's saying now, are we We're going to pursue impeachment? Here's Mueller, did two years of work, gives me 11 counts of obstruction, and I say no, that means the president is above the law. And not only any president, which is a horrible, horrible president that said, but you don't have to think about this outlandish scenario where we have a monstrous president who wants to do wildly illegal things and doesn't believe in our democracy.

He's in office right now, that's the guy you're letting get away with it, okay? So if Pelosi says no impeachment, what's to stop Trump from breaking more laws? He just got to get out of jail free card forever. Imagine if Pelosi's wrong and they don't win the election and Trump wins again. What is he gonna do in the next five and a half years, not just one and a half years? You're gonna say, well, the Democrats told me I could break any law I like. And then they can appoint a special counsel, what difference does it make? The special counsel is going to say you can't indict a sitting president and Nancy Pelosi is going

to do a preemptive surrender. I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And that's not my supporters saying it, that's Nancy Pelosi saying it. And that's just what happened today. Can I take a break? All right. We'll be back. I didn't know I was going to get that angry about it.

But I did. And so we'll take a break. We'll come back and I'll have more righteous rage. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers.

ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired Magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this

exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EXPRE SVPN.com. TYT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. All right, back on a young church, lots of comments, obviously.

Let's go to Twitter. Johnny Sinai said, obstruction of crime you didn't commit is like resisting arrest when you didn't do anything wrong, no? No, Johnny, it is actually different. But I'm glad you're asking the question because cops are often used resisting arrest without an underlying crime and that makes no sense at all, what were you arresting me for, right? This is not the same because if you obstruct an investigation, that is why they couldn't find enough evidence on the crime.

So that is the main reason why you can have obstruction without the underlying crime, because for example, if you burn the evidence, you get charged with obstruction of justice and you You don't get charged with the underlying crime because you burn the evidence, right? So another reason is Mueller didn't investigate, in this particular case, didn't investigate Donald Trump's business dealings with the Russians. So he was obstructing, but for a totally different reason. He's like, oh, he only investigated the election? How did I get this lucky?

Right. And that was referenced in the Mueller report. Mueller speculated that it might be to cover up crimes that are not being investigated, but that one could fear would be investigated. Yes. and then wanting to investigate them. Anyway, all right, let's move forward. Seth Jones says, I was listening to hashtag TYT live and went upstairs.

Come back downstairs to find my mother-in-law listening to it on her own now. She says, you walked away. I wanted to hear them. Seth adds, add one more to the TYT army. I love that, Seth, and your mom-in-law. How you doing? TYT.com slash john. That's how you sign up if you want for membership.

Meg's figure, which says almost time for me to be done working and I get to watch the Young Turks. So glad we are members so I can catch up later. Hashtag TYT live, hashtag member, hashtag TYT army. And by the way, you can try it out for free. We're doing TYT.com slash trial. You get a week free so there's a good time to sign up. You could also do it through t.com slash John. Just one from the member section. I bathe in a very stable geniuses tears, writes in, jank, don't apologize for a jank and destroy session. If we all calm down, then the dust will settle and things will be normalized. This political state shouldn't be normalized.

So thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. There's just one last thing. I want to tell you about our partner. You guys know about it aspiration.com slash t-y-t. Look, guys, peace of mind with your money. And they give away 10% of charity. It's ridiculous how generous it is.

Your money does not get put on the fossil fuel funds and you make more from your money. It's a total win-win or, as we now know it, an aspiration.com slash D.Y.T. All right, so that's a great way to do finances. All right, John, go. Okay, Mitch McConnell is a raging hypocrite, but he's okay with that, as he'll make clear in a video we're about to show you. Bear in mind back just a couple of years ago, Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court during the last year of Barack Obama's second term, and Mitch McConnell said, we don't confirm people in the last year.

Well, now he's got a Republican president. What does he think about that situation in the near future? Here's what he said. Maybe this is right next year. We'd fill it. Yeah, you know, the reason I started with the judges, as important as all these other things are that we're talking about. I mean, if you want to have a long-lasting,

positive impact on the country. Everything else changes. You know, I remember during the tax bill, there were people agonizing over whether one part of the tax bill was permanent or not. I said, look, the only way the tax bill is permanent depends upon the next election. The next election, because people have different views about taxes and the two parties and approach it differently when they get in power. What can't be undone is a lifetime appointment to a young,

man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job the judge is to follow the law. So that's the most important thing we've done for the country, which cannot be undone. Yeah, it's not technically true. They can be impeached, but apparently that will never, ever happen no matter how horrible they are. Yeah, so this is the day that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans stopped trying. Because they realize, makes your media is asleep. It doesn't matter. We could be as hypocritical as we want, and we could be as brazen as we want, and just tell them.

So you see that smile he had? We'd fill it. So look, in case you don't know, just real quick, one more time, Merrick Garland appointed in March of 2016 when Obama's president. Presidents get to appoints Supreme Court justices. McConnell said, well, you are not even going to get a hearing. For 293 days, you would not allow a hearing. And why? He said, oh, well, in the last year of a presidency, obviously you can't fill it because

then the next president should decide. So they asked him a question here, if you said in the last year he can't fill a position. And he smiles and goes, oh, no, we'd fill it. And then his spokesperson put out a statement saying, they asked them, what's the difference? He said, oh, well, last time we controlled the Senate, so we didn't want his appointment to go through. And now we have a Republican president and a Republican controlling the Senate. So we let the appointment through.

What that is is rubbing your face in it, going, yeah, we're hypocrites, what are you going to do about it? Well, the Democrats aren't going to do anything about it. They roll over every time. They're still having a discussion about whether they should end the filibuster when we use it to our advantage in every conceivable way. And they're still having a debate over it, idiots. And the mainstream media will call everything even.

So what difference does it make? I can tell you all day long that I'm a hypocrite and they'll still say, oh, well, it's even, I can't tell who's obstructing, I can't tell. So you should actually look into doing your job. Now they'll say, Jake, that's not fair. We stated his quotes, we gave the quotes, no, you're also supposed to give context. And so when McConnell next time says something, you should give the context of he's a well-known liar and a well-known hypocrite.

Oh, you can't say that. What do you mean I can't say that? He just told you he was a liar. He told, he said during the Obama years, oh, there's a rule that you can't fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the last year of a presidency. Now he says there is no such rule that he made it up because for a sheer power grab. But what do you call that if you don't call it a liar and a hypocrite? So when the media does not call them those things, understand they're not, if they'll

hide behind, I'm doing my job. No, your job is not to be neutral to the facts. It's to be objective about the facts. So if you call it even, you've helped Mitch McConnell lie. That's the reality of it. Ira, go. You know, I don't know if there's anyone that I hate more than this Dukes of Hazard villain Mitch McConnell.

But, you know, it was obvious, you know, that this was going to happen. We all knew it was going to happen. It's just now that they said it out loud. And, you know, maybe that, by the way, is, you know, Pelosi's plan, you know? There's the idea that when a criminal thinks that they've gotten away with it, the last part of the detective novel, they get caught. You know, I feel like they think they've gotten away with everything at this point. And to be so brazen to just like say, oh, we'd fill it, and then have his team put out

a statement that even says, oh no, we didn't do that before because, you know, we controlled everything. And now we wanna be able to do that again. I mean, at some point, either things just burn all the way down or they become so sloppy that they burn. So let me just address that with, sorry, go ahead, John. The issue is that, again, you can technically remove someone from the Supreme Court. It's never going to happen.

It doesn't matter who they are, what they've done, how they got on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is the proof of that. But Mitch McConnell, because of that is basically right. It can't be removed. It's the most permanent thing in politics. They did what they did in the last year of Obama's presidency, and now they've gotten two seats already in just a couple of years. Could well get a third or a fourth if he gets a second. term, then that's the majority of the court will be Donald Trump appointees.

It could have moved in a totally different direction. That would have been a great ally to an eventual progressive president. Now instead for 20, 30, 40 years, we have got a hard right Supreme Court. And so never forget the stakes in the Supreme Court when you're choosing your president. Okay, so to address what Iro is saying, there's my rule about Donald Trump is, there's never any strategy. He can't think two steps ahead, he can only think one step. at a time.

So people are always like, oh, is he just trying to do a distraction? Is he then going to do this or that? No, there is no than. There's no than. Whatever's right in front of it. Me want money, me grab. Me want lie, me say lie, right? Him no, but Mitch, yes.

I think Mitch has a plan, no question. Totally agree with you on that. And I agree with you that Mitch McConnell is not only a Duke of Hazzard villain, which I loved, right, but is actually the bigger cancer. I don't know that you said that, but I'll go further, right? Because Trump is hopefully a one-time thing, and he's personally corrupt and he's so obvious about it, whereas Mitch McConnell is the heart of darkness and the heart of this corrupt system that keeps the money in politics, keeps the corruption going, is brazen about it, and

the mainstream media is willing to call out Trump from time to time, but they are not willing to call out their beloved Mitch McConnell because they're, oh, wow, he said, she said, I can't call him out. And there's, oh, bitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi. Obviously, he's the party, right? Because he is the party, that's right. He's what the GOP is, you know, and Trump is, he's an aberration. He's the crazy thing that they couldn't contain, you know, during 2016. So now they have to work with him.

But once he's gone, they can just go back to being evil with another Republican candidate who will play by the rules. 100%. And that's what the media doesn't call out and drives me crazy. Last thing, though. Now, the flip side of the Trump rule is for the Democrats. And I literally wrote about this back in 2004, and I've been saying it for the entire 17 years of the Young Turks has been on air, okay? They're never going to use their powder.

They always say, well, we're going to keep our powder dry. We're going to keep our powder dry for what we really need it. My God, if we don't really need it now, when are we ever going to need it? Here's a guy who's a lawbreaker in office, wildly out of controlling, competent, mentally unstable, vicious, you know, run a rough shot through the country. Mitch McConnell, his evil henchman rubbing your face in their, you know, lies in hypocrisy, et cetera. And the Democrats say, keep the powder, keep the powder dry. Keep the powder dry. You don't want to do impeachment.

You don't want to call up McConnell. Yesterday, Kamala Harris is in a town hall. They played her that tape. I mean, you see our reaction to it. She was like, oh, well, you know, she didn't even address the hypocrisy. She didn't even address the hypocrisy. So, and I don't mean to pick on Kamala Harris, it's almost all the Democratic leadership. They never act, they're never gonna act.

Look, aren't you dying for a strong Democrat? Someone who's gonna come in and say, politically speaking, I'm going to break Mitch McConnell's back and I'm gonna drink his spinal fluid. And I'm gonna make sure that that son of a bitch never put someone else on the Supreme Court ever again, right? Imagine a Democrat saying that. That seems unbelievable, right? Now with AOC and Talib, you're beginning to believe that it's possible, right?

But for the Nancy Pelosi of the world, oh, oh my God, it's Chuck Schumer. Chuck, where are you at, Chuck? So he said today, oh, he's a hypocrite. Wow. Wow. I think it was with a tweet where he had used characters to make a sign that said Mitch McConnell is a hypocrite, so that's good. I love a meme.

I love a good meme. Okay. Let's see what Vince McMahon thinks about this. Okay, Chuck Schumer, you are the leader of the Democrats, so-called leader of the Democrats in the Senate. You're supposed to come out and say, challenge the media to say, the leader of the Republicans just admitted he's a liar and a hypocrite. I want every one of you to write that in the paper.

If you don't write that in the paper, you're not allowed in my press conference anymore because you're not journalists. Because he just told you to your face that he's a liar and a liar. a hypocrite. What is it gonna take for you? And by the way, I'm gonna make it my life's mission to end Mitch McConnell's career. I'm gonna go find the best person in Kentucky, which by the way, Chuck Schumer will probably find the worst person in Kentucky. Oh, who's taking the most corporate cash? Who's going to seem the most elitist in Kentucky? Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. So that's Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi for you guys. They're never going to act. Their powder is going to be

forever dry. But that's why we should get rid of them all. Look, Justice Democrats, They are going to unveil some new people running against Democratic incumbents soon. So justice is coming. And when it does, you gotta be the army that backs it up. Because these current slate of Democratic leaders are never ever going to fight for you. So, all right, we gotta go. Look, I need everybody to check out Ira's show. Iron Madison, it's called Keep It.

It's on Crooked Media. It's pop culture and politics. It's a little bit lighter than today. Hey, there's a lot of fire and brimstone. I don't know. We're talking about Harvey Watt and seen a lot. Okay. It's kind of dark.

Well, that is dark. That is definitely dark. All right. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. We do have more fire and brinstone when we return because not only me, but the new me, according to the audience from yesterday's, Kamala Harris Town Hall coverage is Ida Rodriguez.

They made me seem tame last night, especially Ida. So that when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.