The Young Turks - No Mercy

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Three Arkansas cops have been placed on administrative leave after they jumped a man outside a gas station. Retired NYPD detective defends the brutality of three Arkansas cops. Members of Congress are calling for Trump to be held accountable for his classified document scandal. Sensor Ron Johnson admits he was only in the fake electors' scheme for “seconds.” CNN’s Mark Kelly gives republicans a shout-out on live TV. The new chief at CNN has met privately with Republicans about how the network can be more accommodating to them. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 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. All right, welcome the Young Turks, Jank Ugar and Kasparian with you guys. We've got an amazing show ahead for you guys. I have dramatic news. I have caused Dr. Fauci there. retire. Look, it happened. I wanted to share the news with you guys. I was last man standing two and

a half years in. I had not gotten COVID. Fauci finally got me today and immediately resigned afterwards. He's like, if we can get Uyghur, we can get everybody. Okay, that's obvious because I'm, you know, one of the healthiest and strongest people alive. And it's okay. It's okay. I'm hanging in there. It's no problem. Okay, besides the nonsense, Fouchi did actually resign today, but under perfectly normal circumstances. Okay, all right, now we do have many other pieces of news that are real. So let's go to our news person slash host slash executive producer. Let's go to our news person, hey.

No, meaning a juxtaposed to me with my nonsense about how it costs bouchy to retire. Yeah, that's true, very true. All right. Well, let's get started. We've got a lot of news to get to, not a great news day to be honest with you, but we pick the best of the best stories to share with you, meaning some of the worst things happening around the country. So let's take a little trip to Arkansas. Three cops in Arkansas have been suspended following video footage of them brutally beating up a 27 year old man by the name of Randall Worcester.

Now two of the cops are from Crawford County Sheriff's Department and a third is from the city of Mulberry. And so far we have very little detail. detail in regard to what this incident entailed in context. We mostly just have statements from the police, and I would caution you in just accepting their narrative, because oftentimes they'll put out a narrative, and then there is evidence that, you know, counters that narrative, but nonetheless, here's what we know so far. This arrest happened at 10.40 a.m. on Sunday. And what prompted it was that the Crawford County Sheriff's Office said a store clerk had called police.

after the alleged suspect here allegedly spat in their face and made threats. According to police, a report indicated that a man was making threats to a convenience store employee in Mulvary on Sunday morning. Police said when the officers confronted the man, he pushed a deputy to the ground and punched the back of his head leading to the arrest. Now we have not seen any footage of that part of the incident. The only footage that we have seen is the cops brutally beating this 27 year old man. And I do want to caution that the video is incredibly graphic, very difficult to see. And keep in mind, you have one person on the ground with three cops on top of him, beating him viciously.

So with that in mind, let's take a look and let's keep our mics up as we talk about it. So again, this is a video in Arkansas. The three cops have been placed. have been placed under suspension, and the state police will be investigating it. And it's just obvious that this is insane, vicious brutality. They're kicking him, they're punching him, you can, oh my God, you can see the cop taking Randall's head and smashing it up against the pavement. And you can't hear the audio, but the woman filming it at one point basically tells them, you know, he's off his medication or something like that and one cop response to her with expletives. And so, Jank, this is yet another story

where you see excessive force. It's abundantly clear. Even if there's verification of what the suspect allegedly did prior to that vicious beating, it still doesn't excuse the brutality we see in that video. You're supposed to place them under arrest, put him in custody, and have the justice system deal with it. And that's not what they did here. They decided. to make sure the man took a beating. So I feel like we're forever stuck between weird extremes. Yeah. And then nobody ever has a conversation about what is sensible and reasonable.

So on the one hand, sometimes we have folks saying, oh, he spit in a guy's face. If that's true, yeah, let him go. Who cares? No, I care. I care a lot. And you don't know his politics, you don't know his mental well-being. You don't know anything about the guy, right? So what if he's a guy who thinks COVID's no big deal and he's going around spitting in people's faces?

So I don't know, no, police do need to take action on that. Sometimes the police do need to get physical. Now, does that justify the right wing position that, hey, if you have to arrest someone and you perceive that they're slightly resisting, you're allowed to kick the living crap out of them, knee them in the head, punch them in the face, smash their head into the concrete pavement? No, of course not. I don't understand the right wing. Why do they think that that's okay? Did they get some sort of emotional, psychological, maybe even sexual release out of it? Like, because they love it. And no decent human being should ever like that.

They should, like, in the worst, worst case scenario, you said, okay, my God, maybe it was necessary if the guy was 400 pounds and was throwing the cops around, et cetera. That guy doesn't look like that at all. I mean, as usual, the cops, their nonsense lies. And they say, well, our lives might have been in danger. Oh, get the out of here, man. Now, the cops in question here didn't say that. But a cable news expert talked about their lives might have been in danger.

You don't know. No, I do know. I saw the guy, he's tiny. I saw three guys on top of him, kicking the crap out of him. So please don't insult our indulgence. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's totally justified to be upset if the store clerk was abused in any way by the suspect, it's also unacceptable to use that kind of brutality toward the alleged

suspect, right? And honestly, it's the root of this huge problem in the country right now where people don't trust the police. That distrust so's an environment where people don't feel safe. They don't feel like the local law enforcement in their town is actually there to protect and serve them. And that's an incredibly dangerous place to be. Now, let me give you some more details. Apparently, the suspect here, Worcester, was brought to a hospital for examination and treatment before being jailed in the Van Buren, Arkansas state. That's what the Van Buren Arkansas, I'm sorry, in Van Buren, Arkansas police, state police said. Now, the Arkansas state police said in a statement Sunday night that it had, quote, opened an investigation into the use of force by two Crawford

County Sheriff's deputies and a Mulberry police officer in the arrest of this South Carolina man. And the other thing I want to mention is the way these investigations go down also so distrust among police departments. Because having the police investigate the police doesn't make any sense. You need the community to have a say in this. You need a third party that is not related to law enforcement do this investigation, an oversight board, do this investigation to ensure that justice is in fact served. But when you have the police investigating the police, we have endless case studies to prove that that does not lead to justice. Oftentimes, the police find that the brutality was somehow justified, even though we're talking about one person with three cops

beating him, three cops on top of him beating him. So the investigation leaves much to be desired. You know, it never really results in the consequences that people or police using brutality deserve. Yeah. So look, a slight upsides here. The leading officer that suspended them acted quickly. Usually they delay for months and don't act and do a CYA operation. And he did not have his own department looking to it. He's having the state cops look into it. So that's slightly better. Usually they look into themselves three months later and six months later, when no one's paying attention, they announce themselves perfectly innocent. So this one is off to a slightly better start. Having said that, most of our viewers are writing with the same comment.

I'll go to Injustifiable on Twitch. Suspension, you meet paid vacation. And of course, that's what happens in all of these cases. If you'd like to have a paid vacation as a cop, beat the crap out of someone. You'll get it. I mean, that's probably part of the terms of union contracts and agreements. Let's just keep it real, right? So yes, that there's injustice in that.

And part of the problem is that the union for the police is incredibly strong. And they ensure that as they're suspended or as they're on administrative leave or desk duty, yeah, they're still getting paid, even if there's evidence showing their brutality. So that's also part of the problem. Finally, the person getting beaten has been charged with multiple serious charges, including second degree battery, resisting arrest, refusal to submit, possessing an instrument of crime, unsure what they're referring to with that charge, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, terroristic threatening, and second degree assault. So oftentimes a lot of

those charges end up getting dropped. We'll see what happens. But again, this story is still developing. We'll give you more details as we find them. Yeah, and my last word is resisting arrest is code word for, oh, we were caught on tape kicking the crap out of him. Sure, we'll say he was resisting arrest. As you can see on the tape, if that was resisting, it wasn't much resistance. That's their catch-off where we'd like to add more charges so that you find him guilty instead of us. Exactly. All right, well, let's move on to our next story.

And it's a second part of this. A retired NYPD detective and so called law enforcement consultant, which is pretty terrifying, man by the name of Tom Verney, was on CNN to discuss a brutal police beating that took place in Arkansas. The beating involved one man with three cops on top of him, kicking him, punching him, and banging his head against the pavement. Now, CNN had this so-called law enforcement consultant on to discuss whether this clearly excessive force is in any way justified. So let's go to the first clip and see what this guy has to say. When you look at the video, just based on the video clip, it seems as if the amount of force that was being used may have been excessive. Police across the United States are trained in the use of force and what level of force is appropriate for the incident at hand. Now, as was reported, you know, we don't see what happened leading up to that end.

In the video itself, you can see that the suspect is not complying with the officers. He's moving around, he's not allowing them to place handcuffs on him to secure him to be able to be transported. So Plain Devil's Advocate, you know, when someone is resisting arrest and they are refusing to comply with the police, what happens is that escalates that situation to where now police have to amp up their level of force from verbal commands to some level or varying levels of physical force or other levels. There were three cops on top of him. He was very clearly restrained, put him in handcuffs and put him in the back of the police cruiser. Why do you need to bang his head against the pavement? That makes absolutely no sense.

We all see the video. But Jake, this is the point that I'm trying to make, right, about the Arkansas state police doing the investigation on the three cops involved in this incident. The police protect the police. At the end of the day, the state police are still police. They cover for one another. You have this former NYPD detective. He's retired. He doesn't have to worry about job security. And this guy is like looking at this case and trying to make excuses for what we saw on tape. Yeah, I actually have one slight disagreement with you. I don't think he's making excuses. I think he's just saying what he thinks is perfectly normal. normal. And for most cops, that that's perfectly normal. If you don't comply with my orders,

of course I'm going to smash your head into the pavement. I've never seen a cop on TV, in the media anywhere. Look, I can't vouch for what they say in private, right? Although sometimes we see what they say in private with leaked text, and it's way worse. But now those are the bad guys, right? And I'm sure they're good guys within the police force. Having said that, whenever I see them, they're always saying maximum force is awesome. I love it. I think, besides loving it, I just think it's perfectly normal. It's exactly what we should do.

And internal investigation after internal investigation of the police confirmed that they were following guidelines. They kind of do teach them to do that. Maybe not smash their head into the pavement, but subdue them by significant force. And if you're a cop out there and you're pretending they didn't teach you that, come on, get the F out of here. Even you don't believe that. Well, in the next video, you'll see Jim Shuto, the CNN host, try to challenge that narrative a little bit. So let's take a quick look at that. Forgive me because when I watch that video and I've watched it a number of times, some of the movement I see the suspect doing is to cover his head.

And I wonder, as you know better than us, there is training not just in level of full. force, but tactics, what specific means of force officers can and should use to subdue a suspect? And I'm asking, you see the multiple punches to the head, and then, and I'm going to let this continue, as disturbing as it is, there's a point at which one of the officers appears to be banging his head on the pavement. Is that tactic taught, right there, is that tactic taught in any police training to subdue a suspect? That specific tactic of banging someone's head into the ground? No, if you are in a fight for your life, you use whatever force is necessary to make sure that you can escape from that incident. So the follow-up question should naturally be, do you believe that those cops, particularly the one who was banging his head against the pavement, was in fear for his life?

That's the follow-up question. Now, they didn't ask that follow-up question, unfortunately. But if they're not trained to do that, with one exception, which is they fear for their life, do you believe that that cop banging that guy's head in the pavement was in fear for his life? Yeah. So I think the cable news anchor accidentally asked a really good question. First, let me give him credit. It was a good follow-up.

I'm glad he asked the follow up, right? But then he had to put in there, I mean, you're the expert, you would know better than us. No, he's the person who's most biased on the set. He's probably done very similar things. So he's the least objective person, and he's going to give you the very worst perspective on this, which is the cops are always right. That's not journalism, that's not news. That's just bring on a cop to do cop propaganda on your show about police abuse. And then that follow-up should have obviously happened, Anna.

And so bottom line is when he said, hey, I know we're not taught that tactics specifically. Well, that's exactly what I just said, isn't it? Right before you saw the video. In other words, yeah, we do tactics like that. And yeah, of course we're taught that. But no cable news anchor will ever follow up with. Wait, isn't that horrible? The training that almost all cops in the country received to kick the living crap out

other citizens is awful training that of course they're never going to ask. Now there's a final video that I want to get to and it has to do with the mental health of the person who's getting beaten by these three cops. Let's watch. In the videos, as a matter of fact, they mentioned the woman, there's a woman screaming that he needs his medication, he's not his medication, that would seem to indicate that he may need some sort of maybe antipsychotic medication or some other medication to control to control him himself, and when people are supposed to be on medication and they're not, they many times will have the strength of 10 men. And it's hard to subdue someone like that.

Really? That's your expert information. You're a health expert now and you're aware of mentally ill people off their medication and their strength level. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, Jank. Have you ever heard that? That if someone isn't on the medication they need for their mental health condition, they somehow magically become Iron Man? Yeah. No, that's how Hulk happened. It was scam arrays plus being off your medication and then you turn green. No, but cops have been using nonsense and oftentimes racist justification for as long as I've been alive. Oh, they assume, and this is proven in studies, that black men and black boys are way stronger than they're They appear to be, that's what cops think.

And so they beat up and shoot black boys at a much greater rate. Now they have this excuse that anyone who might be off their medication is Hulk or she Hulk and that they need to, you know, again, beat the crap out of them. And second of all, Anna, think about the opposite side of this. I is, I hope I'm a halfway decent human being. I thought, oh, he's off his medication. So the cops should be more careful with him, not beat him up more. Like, but for the cop, his first point is, well, if he's off his medication, and that's why he's doing things that are not rational, we should hit him harder.

And that just right there is stunning to morality, anyone who's a decent moral person. But that's why I harp on the training, because we teach our cops to be immoral and indecent. And one other thing I just want to mention, because Jane, correctly noted that oftentimes the super power strength trope is used in regard to a black suspect. In this case, the suspect is white. So as far as we know, there is not a racial component here. But it doesn't matter. I mean, he's using the exact same ridiculous argument of, oh, what could we do? These three cops were just outmanned by this one individual who was on the ground face down with three of the cops on top of him. It's a ridiculous argument to make,

but he makes it on national television nonetheless. All right, we got to take a break. Let's do that. And when we come back, we'll talk about what members of Congress are saying in regard to Donald Trump and the investigation into his illegal access to classified documents. We've got that and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back.

All right, well, I'm the young Turks. Jake you're Anna Kasparian with you guys. We're back, hopefully without the leap blur. Okay, so now I've got the next story for you guys, so let's do this, okay? Now, some people with top secret classified clearance are asking a really good question. Hey, if Donald Trump isn't prosecuted, are there going to be two different sets of laws? One that applies to him for handling classified intelligence and one that applies to us for handling classified intelligence. And would we go to jail for things that Trump did and didn't go to jail for?

Those are excellent. The new BMO, V.I. Porter, MasterCard, is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. The guy putting that together, actually, is Richard Ojetta, a TYT contributor on Rebel Headquarters.

You should check them out there. He ran for Congress in West Virginia. was a really interesting populist candidate, and he is a decorated veteran. And someone else joining him is Representative Ted Liu, U.S. Congressman, in fact, my congressman. So there's some real heavy hitters here, and Congressman Liu is a former colonel. And so I will get to that in a second. But first, they put out a letter to the Department of Justice. Let me read you a part of it.

It says national security clearance, as folks like me know, is something that we are entrusted by the nation that we have sworn to protect. To gain our clearance, we do so with the recognition that if we reveal those secrets, our country has a right to punish us. Any one of us knows that imprisonment is a possibility for breaking our oath, which is why we're angry that our former President Trump thinks he's above the law. How many thousands of us are true to our word? My fellow vets and I serve this country through far more treacherous situations than any he's ever been in. We're sworn to our country, so we understand the gravity of these secrets. Now that's an excellent point, and that's why what the Department of Justice does or doesn't do here with what appears to be massive violations of how you handle classified intelligence for Donald Trump is going to have consequential effects.

Will there then be a political test if a Republican handles documents in a certain way or someone who's part of the elites handles documents in a certain way? They get different rules, but people who have normal classified intelligence get prosecuted to the full extent of the law. So among the people that are asking this, or as I said, Senator, I'm sorry, that's jumping the gun. Representative Ted Liu, he's a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, Richard Ojeda, retired U.S. Army, all these folks are retired today. Alfonso Epps, who was a sergeant major, and Dennis White, who was in the Army as well. And he was a staff sergeant. So they have this up on no damn left behind. That is a pact that Richard is involved with.

They have the letter and they're asking for more people that have classified intelligence to sign the letter, demanding that there be equal treatment here. Now I got some videos from Ojetta himself to make the case, but I wanted to pause here to get Anna's thoughts. I mean, you know where I stand on this issue. I think that the justice system should treat everyone equally and there shouldn't be a two-tier justice system for the so-called not elite versus the elite. And we've seen far too often in this country that the president can commit all sorts of crimes, including literal war crimes and illegal spying on American citizens and get away with it. We have this endless trend of incoming presidents saying that they refuse to prosecute former presidents who have committed crimes. In this case, we have a DOJ

investigation. I'm uncertain about the outcome of this investigation, meaning, I'm uncertain whether the DOJ is really going to prosecute Trump to the fullest extent of the law. But he absolutely should be. Now continue, I have other commentary, but I'll wait until you have some more details. All right. So Ojet, I made a video actually on Rebel Headquarters about this. And first he talks about why a skiff is so important. Skiff is, well, he'll explain a little bit the exact nature of it. But the point being here is some information is so top secret, you are not allowed to take it out of that particular room, which is a very, very heavily guarded. So we'll let OJet exploit the rest. To be in possession of items that are listed as

secret or top secret and not be inside of a skiff would, not could, but would not only cause you to lose your security clearance, but could also lead you to lose your freedom. Talking about conversations you had inside of a skiff, sensitive compartmented information facility with someone outside of a skiff can literally be defined as treason. And now the Justice Department also looking into whether he did have conversations with other people. For example, they're fingerprinting the documents. If there are other nationals fingerprints on those documents, that is going to be devastating. Well, of course, devastating only to irrational people, the Republicans will become even more convinced.

Of course, he should have sold the weapons. That's really smart with the weapons information to the worst people in the world. But we'll wait for that. That hasn't happened yet. But certainly he should be held with the same standards. As Ogena points out there, if the he took files out of a skiff, he would be immediately prosecuted. So with the congressman, so would all of them. Now, he also explains how bad a violation this is. 11 boxes of sensitive documents, some listed as only the highest level of security clearance, can see or know about, just sitting in boxes in a garage or a storage room at Marlau. Any person who has ever served in the military that has obtained a secret or top secret security clearance being caught with such important documents outside of a skiff would not only lose their clearances, but would immediately face a court marshal where it is almost certain their next home would be that of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

guys you really can't argue with that you know that if it was anyone else regardless of politics just a person who's a regular member of the services but has classified intelligence or a member of the intelligence community top secret information if they took it home they're going to fort level north you know it if they mishandled it and they did it on purpose let alone i mean that's a second layer to it they'd go even if they didn't mishandle it on purpose but if they did oh boy they'd be in massive trouble. Speaking of which, one more from Mojetta. That's been 24 years in the United States Army. And I'm going to tell you that everybody that I know that has also held a secret or top secret security clearance right now is

literally shocked that we don't see Donald Trump already in handcuffs. Because if it was any one of us, we would be. And that's a fact. Sapper's cleared the way, airborne all the way. Casper, thoughts. I love his sign off. I had it to make. mention that and put a smile on my face. Number two, you know, we can't forget what happened to Chelsea Manning, what happened to Edward Snowden, what happened to and continues to happen to Julian Assange, okay? And those are cases pertaining to classified documents, which showed that our government was engaging in behavior that was getting innocent people killed, that was, in some cases committing war crimes. And they were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

In the case of Julian Assange, we still have the United States government and the DOJ trying to prosecute him, trying to expedite him here to the United States to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Okay. It's amazing that when it comes to informing the American people that are supposed to be living in a democracy about what their government is actually up to, it's unacceptable. Okay, treason. They need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When it comes to Donald Trump, we really need to ask, I know that everyone in the broadly speaking left agrees with this, but for our friends on the right, does it make sense to send the message that the president of the United States is above the law regardless of what

he does, even if the incident pertains to highly classified top secret documents, including documents that have to do with nuclear weapons? Does it make sense to sell your country out on behalf of your preferred politician, it doesn't make sense. And it does send a message to future administrations that they're above the law and they can do whatever they want. They might be investigated, but the investigation is just a dog and pony show. It doesn't actually result in actual consequences. Now usual points about Democrats or Republicans, notice that we're trying to convince Department of Justice in a Democratic administration to hold Republicans accountable to the law, the bare minimum. We're not asking them

to punish Republicans for political reasons. We would absolutely despise that. We're saying, can you just apply the law evenly? Because we're worried Democrats are going to cheat on behalf of Republicans. Now, on the other side, the Republicans, now, so there's some populist right-wingers that say, no, you should let go, Julianne Assange, and I give them credit for at least consistency. But 90% of the Republican Party certainly elected officials say, no, Julia Assange's enemy of the state and should be prosecuted fully. They all then turn around and say Trump should not be prosecuted. It would be an amazing moment and they would have no problem doing it because they love

hypocrisy and their voters never ever notice it and the mainstream media hardly ever points it out. But I could see Republican senators going Julian Assange should be put in jail for the rest of his life for doing the same exact thing as Donald Trump. And Donald Trump should walk and get absolutely nothing. I mean, they don't care about logic, they'll do it, they'll definitely do it. You can make the case, actually I will make the case and I stand firmly behind it, that Julian Assange did not do something similar to what Donald Trump did.

Donald Trump knowingly took classified documents out of the White House and took it home with him to Mar-a-Lago. He did that personally. He took documents he knew he wasn't supposed to take, Whereas WikiLeaks did exactly what any decent journalist would do, which is when classified documents are handed to a journalist, what is a journalist supposed to do, not report on them? There's no evidence to indicate that he stole the classified documents. But nonetheless, he's the one who's dealing with all these goons within our justice department who want to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and probably throw him in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

Yeah, so I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying. Anna's absolutely right. Julian Assange didn't do anything wrong in the initial charges that they charged him with, including the espionage act. He was actually being a journalist, not like Donald Trump, who took him home for no goddamn reason. There is no reason to take him home other than to sell him. Anyways, but they should do a real investigation of that. And my point is that the Republicans are going to be hypocrites, no matter what, no matter what, even if it was even, they would say, no, the journalists should go to jail and our political daddy should walk. Look, you remember the fist bump that they had.

So this was all after my entire life, 50 years of Republicans saying, oh, we love veterans, support the troops. We start all these wars and not for defense contractors, not so we can engorge ourselves in bribes, but because we love veterans so much. And then they were asking for money for veterans who were sick because of the wars.

And not only did they shoot that bill down initially, they fist bumped over it. Here's show them the video. Mr. Dance, Mr. Dance, no. Yeah, so Cruz, Hawley, all those guys spitting on veterans. Now, anybody with classified intelligence, if you did anything slightly wrong, they want you to go to jail for a long, long time. But Donald Trump, he's going to skate. Last word goes back to Ojetta and Lou's letter. Ojetta wrote, we want to know that our discretion was not for nothing, that we protected our

country as best we could. This government trusted us with their secrets, and we hope that in turn, we can trust the Department of Justice to pursue justice. Damn right, airborne all the way. All right, well, we've got more Trump-related investigations when we return from the break. In this case, we've got Senator Ron Johnson, a Trump lackey, really stumbling and bumbling during a local news interview about his involvement on January 6th. We've got that and more coming right up. All right, back on T. Jank and out with you guys. And this got more news. Let's get right to it.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson is sending the message that if you commit a crime for just a couple of seconds or maybe a couple of minutes, maybe it's not really a crime. You know, just it really depends on the length of time you're involved in a crime. like let's say trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election or attempting to dismantle our democratic process. Now he was speaking to a local ABC affiliate in Wisconsin. And during that conversation, he found himself answering questions about his involvement in attempting to install a slate of sham electors that would essentially hand the election over to Trump, even though Joe Biden won that election. Now, we've got the transcript of it.

It's also on video, but it's local news. So if you want to watch the video version, it's all over the internet. Here's what the transcript says though. Matt Smith, the local news reporter says, have you been asked to testify? Would you testify? At that point, Ron Johnson says, no, I had nothing to do with January 6th. Smith replies, if they asked you to testify, though, would you? Johnson says, what would they ask me to testify about? And Matt Smith says the Republican electors and the slate.

Now Ron Johnson of course is pretending like he doesn't know what they would want to ask him. But as we heard from the January 6th hearings, his staffers were exchanging text messages in regard to the slate of sham electors that they wanted to hand over to Vice President Mike Pence. And he's just pretending like he doesn't know about that. Now, Senator Ron Johnson was then continuing to say that, again, another grotesque distortion, I had nothing to do with the ultimate slate. I had no idea that anyone was going to ask me to deliver those. My involvement in that attempt to deliver, spanned the course of a couple of seconds.

So right there, he's already admitting that he was involved, but it was just a couple of seconds. I think I fielded three texts and sent two and talked to my chief of staff that somebody, He wants to deliver something. In other words, you were involved in discussions about delivering a sham slate of electors. Now he also says, I knew nothing about it. In the end, those electors were not delivered because we found out from the vice president's staff that they didn't want it delivered. Again, I had virtually no involvement. Literally my involvement lasted seconds.

Okay, so let's pause for a second. You were involved, you are admitting on television in the context of this local news interview that you were involved and the only reason why you and your staff didn't hand over the slate of sham electors is because Mike Pence knew what you were trying to do and he said no, he wasn't interested. It's kind of amazing, like he's just admitting it, but somehow thinks that there's no incriminating element to this. Yeah, um, that. That's one of my favorite quotes now. My involvement only lasted seconds, which I think a Republican men can say for a lot of things.

But okay, first of all, Your Honor, I pulled a trigger and the bullet went out of it and murdered someone. But I only pulled it for a couple of seconds. I mean, that was my whole involvement. I mean, somebody handed me the gun and I shot it, but it only took a couple seconds and that guy was dead. I mean, that's, am I really culpable for that? Yeah, totally. So I've told a longer version of the story to members, TYT.com slash join. But friends of mine had gotten punched by some guy. They go to court this a long time ago. And the knucklehead on the other side says, your honor, man, this is not true. I don't punch him in the head. I punched him in the stomach. The judge is like, yeah, that's still assault. Thank you for admitting it. You're guilty. That's exactly what just happened to Ron Johnson. And yes, he's as dumb as that. metalhead was in Jersey, central Jersey. All right, all right. And last thing for me for now is the important part here, though, is why is he backpedaling? Because normally what Republicans do is goddamn right, yeah. Those are the real electors. I mean, we call them fake electors in the emails,

but whatever, okay, Donald Trump is president slash king slash profit, but he's not saying that. And he's trying to get away from Trump. What that means is, uh-oh, he's in trouble. Poll numbers in Wisconsin is showing he's losing than a Democrat, Mandela Barnes. And so now all of a sudden he's like, Trump who? Fake electors, what? Stolen election, never heard of such a thing. Involved for only a couple of seconds.

Oh, is that right? Right. He's trying to distance himself from Trump. And I think it's just, it's really fascinating when you see that happen. I mean, we saw that happen with Oz as he's running. for that Senate seat in Pennsylvania, you know, during the primary, he really positioned himself as a Trump lackey. And now during the general, he's distancing himself. But this incident with Ron Johnson's a little different, both I think because of this ongoing January 6th investigation

and because it's not really something that bodes well for him in his reelection campaign. Now, Matt Smith, the reporter, continues to ask Johnson, if the vice president's chief of staff wouldn't have said don't deliver these. Would you have brought the documents to the vice president? It's a great question. By the way, shout out to Matt Smith. I think he did an excellent job with the interview. And he asked tougher questions than we see, certainly from cable news reporters.

But Ron Johnson responds and says, in what way could I? In what way could have I? Again, we did our due diligence. If somebody hands us something, we're supposed to deliver it to the vice president. Does he want it? Nope. Okay, end of story. That was it. But it's important to understand that Ron Johnson is pretending like he didn't know what those documents were. He did know what those documents were. He did know that the documents contained the sham electors. And so when he he's just like honestly, he sounds like someone who's traveling with a massive amount of drugs.

And then they get caught and they're like, I didn't know that that drug trafficker like gave me a giant package of cocaine to smuggle into the United States. I had no idea. And with Ron Johnson, you knew, we have evidence that you knew. In fact, why don't we go to the last graphic here? And it's the exchange between his staffers. So Sean Riley says, Johnson needs to hand something to the vice president of the United States. Please advise. Chris Hodgkin, Hodgson, or whatever his name is says, what is it? Sean Riley responds, alternate slate of electors. And it's, obviously clear that that's what they're referring to. And then Chris responds, do not give that to him. And I think at that point, it became clear that the vice president wasn't willing to do Trump's bidding

by essentially using this sham slate of electors. And then one other thing that doesn't look good for Ron Johnson is how quickly he runs away from questions pertaining to his involvement. If you can remember, there was an earlier incident when a reporter was trying to ask him about it in Capitol Hill. And he pretended like he was talking to someone on the phone when, In reality, he was not. Let's watch that. Did you know about what your chief of staff was doing with the alternate slates of a abductors?

No, you're not. I can see your phone. I can see your screen. I can see your screen. And then later he had no choice but to actually answer the questions. And his answers change a little bit, Jank. They don't stay the same. So let's watch one more video.

Pay close attention to what he says here versus what he said in the interview with the local news reporter and Wisconsin. Why was your chief of staff even offering this to the vice president? That was a complete down story. We just you a statement. And this is a non-story. I don't know what you're, what you're even concerned about. You said that you were, your chief of staff was saying that you offered,

you wanted to tell. No, no, no, no. No, no. This was a staff to staff exchange. And I was. And I was, you know, basically unaware of it. And the chief staff contacted the vice president's staff. So do you want this?

They said, no, and we didn't deliver it. And that's the end of story. Well, why was he even asking for that? Because somebody delivered this to our office and asked to deliver that to vice president. Did you support the, his efforts to try to get those slates to the vice president? No, I had no knowledge of this. Really? So did you do the crime for just a couple seconds?

Or were you not involved at all? It seems like the story is changing a little bit. Yeah, there's hypocrisy all over this. Is whenever they go to the, I got staffed excuse, that means it's really bad. That's them going, pulling a shaggy, say, won me, one me. It was my low level staffers, go fire them, I'll fire them, I don't care. I'm a Republican anyway, I'm terrible to my workers. I would give me nothing but pleasure to get rid of one of them for fun anyway.

So I'll blame them for what I did, so that's normal. Guys, one more thing. If there's nothing wrong with what you did, why do you have to excuse it by saying you only did it for a couple of seconds? Right. That's a really great point. It really is. Yeah. And again, the story changes ever so slightly depending on what day you catch him. And I would have no problem testifying under oath if I knew that my involvement was not a problem.

that I wasn't involved at all, but he seems to be running away from the idea of having to testify or cooperate with this investigation. And I think that alone is problematic, at least in terms of optics. Yeah, hey, did you help your friend move in? Only for a couple of seconds. No, you would be proud. You would say, oh yeah, I spent all day helping my friend move in. It was really hard, but hey, no big deal. Okay, you wouldn't say I did it only for a couple seconds, you only say that when you're guilty. Exactly. All right, well, let's take the heat off the right wing for just a few minutes and move over to feckless Democrats in the Senate. In particular, Mark Kelly.

I want to ask you about your Republican opponent in the upcoming Arizona Senate election. He says Democrats want to, quote, change the demographics of the country. He has openly embraced Donald Trump's election lies. He has the support of a lot of openly racist, notorious individuals. The Arizona Republican nominee for governor says President Biden isn't a legitimate president. He, she says she wants her Democratic opponent in jail. The Republican nominee for Secretary of State in Arizona. He's a self-proclaimed member of the oath keepers.

Jake Tapper is setting up what I would argue is a layup for Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. Here are all these incredibly questionable problematic figures within the Republican Party. What do you do about that? What are your feelings about that? How do you move forward, of course, because cable news is obsessed with this, in a bipartisan manner. And Mark Kelly just can't stop himself from talking about his love affair with his political opponents. Let's take a look at the rest of that video. You hold the seat once filled by John McCain, who was a conservative, but he did work across the aisle.

He was very critical of voices like the ones I just mentioned, not them specifically, but that kind of what he would call loony tunes. What's happened to the Arizona Republican Party? Well, you know, unfortunately, I think right now that the folks you mentioned have some really dangerous ideas. And they're not consistent with most Arizonans, even most Republicans in Arizona. So, you know, I'm hoping we can move away from that. You know, my Republican colleagues that I talked to in the United States Senate, you know, I mean, these are good people, you know, by and large, who are working really hard. And they don't need those dangerous ideas in the United States Senate. Republicans, really good people, including Republicans in the great state of Arizona that just

gave Kerry Lake a win in the Republican primary in this gubernatorial race. Carrie Lake, a Trump lackey, someone who repeats lies about the election allegedly being stolen from Donald Trump. But no, Jank. I mean, all of those questionable figures that were mentioned by Jake Tapper in the very beginning of that interview or that clip, I should say. I mean, it's just a fringe. It's just a fringe element of the Republican Party. And honestly, I think that kind of thinking, especially by a member of the Democratic establishment, is so incredibly foolish, naive, and delusional. Yeah, it's the attitude of a complete loser. But I'm going to give you an excuse for Kelly in a second. If you're a Democratic apologist, don't get

excited, it's going to get worse. So first off, that was the biggest softball I've ever seen. And so if you can't hit that out of the park, you suck at this. Hey, your opponents are basically Beelzebub and Shayton, right? And by the way, they kind of are. They're not kind of, They really, like they're as bad as he is his actual physical, literal upon him is Blake Masters. Blake Masters has praised the idea of not being a democracy. Look, we had Curtis Yarwin who Blake Masters quotes regularly on the conversation. It just aired today. Go check it out.

We'll put the link down below to the long interview that I had with him. He says, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think a dictator is the right way to go. And whether you want to connect that to Blake Masters or not, you can read their quotes and see if that's, You feel comfortable or uncomfortable with that. But it's not like Jake Tapper is telling you that somebody's extreme when they're not extreme. And instead of going, God damn right, you're right, Jake. Mark Kelly comes in and goes, oh, well, I mean, my beloved, the Republican friends, I love them so much. I'd love to kiss their ass on national television.

You're running against them. You knucklehead. Okay, so look, what's my excuse for Kelly? Like cops are taught cowardice, they don't come in this, count. That would be ridiculous. They're just relatively random collection of people. And their training says, don't ever take any risks. Okay, just, and it's better that somebody else dies than you get a, you know, a hangnail. And for Democratic politicians, the leadership teaches them how to be losers. So they bring in consultants and they go, now remember, when you're running against a Republican, you should tell the voters how great Republicans are. They're taught to be the dumbest, biggest losers in America by people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden.

These morons have been doing it for decades, and they're losing very winnable races because of it. You see the quote, what do you say? My Republican colleagues are, quote, good people working really hard. Why would you give them an ad when you're on TV? You're supposed to say vote for us, Democrats, not for the other guys. It's not that complicated. There's no way that Senator Kelly is that dumb. Someone has to teach you to be that dumb.

So congrats democratic leadership. I mean, I just think that this system inspires the type of statement that you heard from Kelly. Because at the end of the day, I mean, are we really going to pretend like the Republican Party was better prior to the Trump era? I mean, their bigotry and racism was certainly a little less explicit and overt. But at the end of the day, the policies that they were championing, what they wanted to do with this country, how they wanted to dwindle down what's left of our social safety net to essentially non-existence. All of that existed before Trump. Their willingness to strip women and members of the LGBTQ community of their rights still existed.

willingness to start preemptive wars that lasted for decades existed prior to Donald Trump. Their unwillingness to do a damn thing about gun control in this country, which he should care about considering how it affected his family personally, that all still existed prior to Trump coming into office. So pretending like the Republican Party is just a unique brand of awful today or only a certain portion of the Republican Party is a unique brand of awful today, I think is ridiculous and again, delusional, but it's also true that these Republicans do serve, especially in the Senate, as a convenient excuse for Democrats being unable to do a damn thing when they're in power, right? Oh, what could we do? We needed 10 Republicans to vote

along with us for this legislation. What could we do? What could we do? Well, did you fight for it? Did you do away with the legislative filibuster so you didn't need a single Republican? I mean, they love the convenient excuses. Final thing I'll say, you mentioned people like Chuck and Nancy Pelosi. And you're right, Jank. You're right about some of the lessons that we learn from people like Pelosi, for instance. And let me remind you of what Pelosi loves to say repeatedly. I've also said that Republican Party, which country needs a strong Republican party. It made great contributions to our country. I say this to Republicans all the time. The country needs a strong Republican Party, not one that has been hijacked as a cult.

I think our country needs a strong Republican party. It's very important. Democrats love a strong Republican Party. It's very important. Now, to put it in fuller context, of course Pelosi is trying to make the argument that we need a strong Republican party that slaps down the Trump era of republicanism. But what she fails to understand is that the Trump brand is the Republican Party today. Okay, it's that's who the they are. Trump gave them permission to be far more honest about who they are. And even before then, they were awful before then. What great contributions? Where's the follow up to that? What great contributions? Anna, you know what we need? This country doesn't need a strong Republican

party. We have one that's already way, way, way over the top. No, we need a strong Democratic party to fight against them. Yes. But instead these losers come in there and kiss Republican ass when they're supposed to be the head of the Democratic Party. I am so sick of them going to say, oh, my Republican friends, I love them so much. Why don't you go make out in a corner, okay? Take it somewhere else. You guys are disgusting. You know, I mean, to your point, Anna, for God's sake, Mark Kelly's wife is Gabby Goodfords. She was a Democratic congresswoman who was shot in the head. And by the way, your beloved Republican colleagues all voted, not the new ones, the extreme right wing.

No, the ones you got, you just praised. They all voted to make sure that there would be no consequences, that there would be no restrictions on gun control so that that could happen again and again and again. And yet you still kiss their ass. No, these Democrats, the establishment Democrats are completely hopeless because they're corrupt with Republicans. They totally agree on economic issues. But our press is a bunch of goddamn liars, and they won't ever say the thing that is obvious.

Hey, wait a minute, you guys vote the same way on economic issues all the time. So yeah, maybe you might disagree on social issues, but isn't it true? And look at how they just fetishized bipartisanship. Isn't it true that you guys actually agree on corporate pork when it comes to every industry, infrastructure, semiconductors, tax cuts for corporations, on and on and they all pass easily? Tapper would never ask that, because Tapper loves it when they're bipartisan. Think about how stupid that is. You know, in favor of bipartisanship, why, as a concept?

Well, what if one side is a reasonable party and the other side is Nazis? Would you still be in favor of bipartisanship? Oh, yeah, of course. Bipartisan ship is always good. No, it is it? Use your brain for half a second. No, that's why we're losing to Republicans, because these all, corrupt morons are in charge in the Democratic Party and corporate media. And one last thing,

to Anna's point, you idiot elitist. It's not just the extreme right wing that's such a tiny minority. No, it's the entire Republican Party. They just put Blake Masters as your opponent. He doesn't even believe in democracy. How stupid are you that you kiss their ass anyway and say, don't worry, Republicans are awesome, just a tiny little fringe group. Don't worry. Why are you making excuses for them. Pathetic, pathetic carry links in Arizona. And yet you still say Republicans are generally wonderful, but a tiny little exception for the extreme right way. No, they're all voting for them, you morons. You're going to get us all. You're going to lose democracy on your watch. Exactly these idiot senators like that. All right. That does it for our first hour. We're going to take

a brief break. And when we come back, we have some more news, including the window for CNN to ask tough questions has maybe completely closed under new CNN ownership. We'll give you that story and more coming right up. 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.