The Young Turks - No Relief

Episode Date: July 1, 2023

The Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan as unlawful. Ex-Trump staffer cuts deal with Jack Smith Jan. 6 election interference probe. Fugitive Jan. 6 suspect arrested near Obama's home with weapons and explosive materials, police say. MPU investigation into Delaware finds more towns where it’s legal for LLCs to vote. Hundreds arrested as France rocked by third night of fiery protests over fatal police shooting of teen. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), John Iadarola (@johniadarola) & Yasmin Khan (@YazzieK) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com 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. 3x3.3.3.3.3.3. Drop it like it. Drop it like it's student debt relief. Oof. All right, Power Power Panel. Jake Hugar, John Idaulo of Damage Report fame. Yasmin Khan, contributor at Breakdown. How you doing?

I'm doing well. Good to be here. All right, excellent to have you on the power panel. I had a cousin named Yasimin because we're Turkish. Okay. Okay, so close. Close. Yeah.

Yeah, my name is very phonetic, Yasmin, but everybody says it with a Z. Yes, but yes, yeah. Yeah, but you know why, look, to be fair to everyone, A, sometimes names from other countries like Jane Cougar spelled with C can be difficult, right? Yeah, and also there's tons of different versions of Yasmin, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, even I Americanize my own name whenever I pronounce it, but my family, they always do the hard F, everybody else serves a Z there. And then, of course, I get a lot of Jasmine and Yasmin and, you know, all the different variations. I get them all.

I get a lot of Hank, Sank, Kank, and Yank. So that's fun for everybody. That one's a bit of a stretch. Yeah. All right. Anyways. I like that. Not bad.

Okay. Hey, I've got a lot of vowels in my last name. You think anyone's ever pronounced that right? Come on. No, I don't even pronounce it right now. You do have a very intimidating, formidable last name, John. At least your first name is just John though, that's easy. It's for balance in the universe.

I like that your last name is formidable. All right, we gotta do the news. This is fun for everybody, but Yon, take it away. Thank you. I wasn't expecting that. Okay, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has effectively for now annihilated the planned student debt relief that Joe Biden rolled out, relatively early on in his first term.

Six-three decision by the court's conservative majority derailing that major campaign pledge. Up to 40 million Americans who stood to have up to $20,000 in student debt wiped away will now not. Or will they, maybe? We're going to debate it, but as of right now, no, they're not going to. It was going to happen, and now it's not going to, reminding everyone of how important every different aspect of government is. Who your president is, whether they're going to push for student debt elimination, all of it, a little bit of it, a minor amount of it, like Joe Biden, who controls Supreme Court nominees. Very, very important stuff for millions and millions of Americans. So if you haven't been following this back and forth, we're going to catch you up on what Joe Biden was going to do.

He contended that his administration had the authority to forgive student loan debt under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. The law allows the Education Secretary to waive or modify loan provisions in response to a national emergency, such as the coronavirus pandemic. And so the Education Secretary, as well as Joe Biden, proposed a plan that would eliminate up to $10,000 for individual student debt borrowers making up to $125,000, double that for married couples. And those who received Pell grants, a form of financial aid for low and middle income students, would be able to double that to eliminate the $20,000. John Roberts, writing with the majority, said the secretary asserts that the Heroes Act grants of the authority to cancel 430 billion of student loan principle, it does not. We hold today that the act allows the secretary to, quote, waive or modify existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the

Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up. And of course, he was joined by all of the conservatives. Get used to that, particularly for decisions that are important of implications, monetary, financial implications for wealthy individuals and corporations. And to be clear, I'm not a lawyer. I know you've got your training, obviously. When he says you can do these little changes, but you can't fundamentally recreate it, I see no way in which that means literally anything. They seem to just take issue, I guess, with the amount. They seem to accept that you can cancel debt during a national emergency. We already know, thanks to Donald Trump, it was declared to be an emergency.

He just decided to cancel more than had previously been done. And I guess that allows them to define that as a fundamental rewrite of the entire thing. But just, again, get used to this. Like, they're just making stuff up as they go along now. It's never been more clear that they are not some, they're not divine fonts of judicial wisdom. They're people who theoretically could have ran to be Republican congressmen, but instead they did this. Yeah, I think that's largely right. And there's two reasons for that. So number one, to John's point about how vague their ruling is, we already know that they have stopped interest payments

so that students don't have to pay the interest payments during COVID times. And Trump did that as well. So there's no question that they could stop payments to some degree. so we're just arguing over degrees and now the Supreme Court decides in their role as activist judges we don't like the law as you're trying to execute it we want it to be our version

well that's not supposed to be your job and especially from a conservative perspective so this is as activists as a guest number two conservatives pretended for forever that they care about the plain reading of the statute Okay, we don't want any activist judges over interpreting, so whatever the statute says is what it is. Well, it says right there, wave or modify. Wave.

You could wave it entirely. Wave does not mean partial. Wave, modify means partial. Wave means gone. So the statute in its plain reading says you can get rid of all of the debt. The executive can, the president can, if he wants to. And they're like, uh, yeah. But we don't really like the English language anymore.

Did we say plain reading before in all of our conservative legal principles? Yeah, never mind, we don't mean it. Which brings me to the final part of this, which is they, including the other decision they made today, but that's later in the program, they absolutely shredded the concept of legal standing. So the way that works is, in order to sue, you have to actually be affected. You can't be like, oh, Joe, harm Bob, and I feel bad about it. I'm going to sue. Otherwise, the courts would all be clogged out with re-relevant people who are not actually harmed, right? And in this case, the states, and they took Missouri

in particular, they're like, well, if you do student debt relief, there's a debt relief company or debt servicing company, I should say, in our state. And they would make like 10 bucks less. And so they'd pay like 37 cents less in taxes. So we're affected, okay? Like, I'm obviously doing hyperbole on the amounts, but not by that much. So that is a minimal, minimal contact with a case as you could possibly have. Okay, okay, wait, now this is a new rule, apparently, because that wasn't the old rule on legal standing at all. I mean, they're really stretching like crazy here to get somebody to challenge this law

or the execution of this law because they just didn't agree with the president. And they wanted, it was a political decision based 100% on policy. And so, and of course, they're benefactors that pay for all their vacations and homes. and all those things also don't want this to be executed. So hey, you know, you got to deliver, otherwise you're not going to be able to catch those giant fish and the beautiful hunting trips, etc. So out it goes. But guys, according to that, and this is important, and I'm fortunately to be an uneven playing field, but the blue states can then go, okay, hey, you passed a conservative law, you did a conservative executive action. The state of California was definitely financially impacted, and we could show how we were financially impacted.

to 10,000 times more than Missouri was in this particular case. So you have set the bar at almost nothing, okay? So that means every blue state should sue on every conservative law ever passed, not just in the future, but go backwards. I don't like that law. I don't like that law. It affected me. And now we have a new rule on standing, which is, I don't really need it.

I can just go in and do whatever the hell, sue on whatever the hell I like. Okay? Well, look, I didn't say that precedent. The conservative justices set that precedent. So blue states, let's go get an army of lawyers and challenge every goddamn law. Of course, they won't because they're Democrats, but they should. Yasman. Yeah, I think it's interesting because, I mean, what is this?

What was it? 40 million Americans are going to be affected by this. Joe Biden's administration is going to be affected by this. This was one of his major campaign promises that he was going to get this done for a lot of people. And a lot of people voted at least in part for him because of that. So it'll be interesting now to see how the whole administration kind of pivots to whatever their next step is. I know that there was some talk about maybe expanding the court, which could help to, you know,

palliate the impacts of this very conservative court that clearly is working against what the majority of Americans actually want to happen. But we've yet to see if that's an avenue that Biden will pursue in a meaningful way so far. And I think, you know, a lot of people took solace in the fact that burdening the younger generations, which such crippling debt for years and years of their lives is bad for the economy. And if there's anything that motivates leaders in Washington, it's usually money. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be that concerned with future generations. And we've seen them demonstrate that across the board, across several boards in the form of some of the

policies and decisions that are largely, what's the word, geriatric government has put forth. You know, we know that this will be bad for the economy in the long run. It's already proven to be so. The justices on the Supreme Court know that too. There's no way that we know that here and they don't. That argument isn't going to work going forward. So we're going to have to figure something out. By the way, you mentioned there how it affects Biden. Can you, if Trump was in office, how many times would you have already tweeted that this was election interference? They're messing with his chances or whatever. It's a big witch hunt.

It's a hoax. Like we can't you, the Democrats couldn't do the thing that you said because the, again, the Supreme Court is not setting up a new standard of damages. In this case, this is what it counts as. And in others, it'll be whatever it needs to be because there's no standards. Because if not then, I think they just effectively made war impossible. You can sue any time the president sends soldiers to war because when soldiers are said to war, some of them die. And when they die, they're not there in the state. And if they're not there, then they don't make money. They don't pay taxes.

Ergo, the states have lost tax revenue. It's exactly the same thing as what they're citing. Financial impact. It is a direct financial impact. Every single soldier that dies financial impact, the war is illegal. Again, none of these are standards, though. And John's absolutely right. And you can do it on almost any law.

Okay. So look, if Democrats had any sense at all, in a short period of time, they would launch 12, 100, 200 lawsuits on every conservative law that has ever passed. Because this is the easiest standard in the world to get standing. And then let the Supreme Court go, yeah, we were liars. We were only giving standing to Republicans and not to Democrats. Yeah.

Well, look, the whole issue is with standing and all that. The justices did talk about it. That'll be certainly a conversation going forward. And honestly, later on the show, when you're all talking about the same-sex marriage ruling, that's even more so. It's, there's no saying whatsoever, it has nothing to do with the person who's actually involved in the case. So again, precedent means nothing, standing means nothing. Nothing means anything except that all of this means that the Supreme Court has been set up as the ultimate final defenders of the status quo.

They're there, almost impossible to get rid of to make sure that nothing happens. And it's why we spent years warning people to not allow the Republicans to take control of the Supreme Court because it will be used to destroy any hope of progress for years, not decades going forward. That said, as I alluded to in the intro to this, there is some hope perhaps that this student debt relief could be reformulated. Here is Joe Biden talking about that. First, I'm announcing today a new path consistent with today's ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible.

We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called higher Education Act. That I thought that will allow Secretary Cardona who's with me today to compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances. This new path is legally sound. It's going to take longer, but in my view it's the best path to be managed to providing for many borrowers possible with debt relief. I've directed my team to move as quickly as possible on the law. Just moments ago, Secretary Cardona took the first step to initially that to initiate that new approach. So in crazy times like this where the Supreme Court is making these massive decisions like getting rid of student debt,

that's what you want out of your president. You want a president to come out fighting. He can barely contain how furious he is about what the Supreme Court is doing there. You can tell by the fact that he's talking like this. Anyway, the substance of what he's saying implies that he understands what many have been saying throughout today and have been advocating for for literally years, that he should not have gone about. student debt relief in the particular way that he did, that there are other ways that you can pursue it, other laws that have already withstood judicial scrutiny, or at least judicial

scrutiny outside of this Supreme Court, which again doesn't feel like it needs to abide by any precedent. And so there is at least some hope, but what do you think? Yeah, so look, my opinion, real opinion and honest opinion is that Joe Biden's throwing the game. He never really wanted to do this. And I say that based on His previous statements about student dead and how incredible skeptical he was. And then right before the election when his consultants convinced them, oh, yeah, young voters made a difference. That's why you won the presidential election in the first place.

So in 2020, so right before the 2022 midterms, he's like, oh, yeah, I will do this. But don't worry, the Supreme Court's going to handle it, you know what I'm saying? Okay, to his donors, but to the young voters, oh, I'm on your side. Now, look, I'm in a reserve judgment because there's some that are super, obvious with Biden? Like, oh, I'm for minimum wage. The minute he gets in the office, no, I'm not. No, it's not going to make it. It's not going to make it, right? And he sends his top allies to vote against it super clear, right? This one, it's a little bit in the middle because at least they tried something, which is, we have the lowest bar in the world for Democratic

leaders, right? But he, like, he took one step forward, a step he thought he was going to lose on, and today he did lose on. And so I got to say, well, that's better than the usual. And of course, mainstream media will be saying, he's a great fighter for students and he's trying all the things. And they will say that. They have said that. Every article I've read today says Biden, but with getting back into the fight,

not fighting really hard, going to do it another way, okay, because they've got to do marketing, marketing. And so to give you a sense of what Democratic leaders actually think, though, I want to tell you something that the majority opinion quoted, someone they quoted. It was a very important leader on the Hill. So Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, to support their opinion. No, Nancy Pelosi. Here's Pelosi's quote.

People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power. that has to be an act of Congress. That is Nancy Pelosi. And so the majority was like, look, even the former Speaker of the House, well, the top Democratic leaders says that you guys are lying and that you can't do this. I mean, if you guys agree that you can't do this, we're going to vote no, that you can't.

Thank you very much. Do you see mainstream media going nuts about how Nancy Pelosi betrayed you and how she threw the case and helped the Republicans win? you think she doesn't know when she said that statement we came on the show and said oh that's gonna hurt us don't say that that's gonna hurt us even though she's dead wrong she's 100% wrong it's irrelevant that she's wrong 100% wrong show me in new york times or CNN piece that says Nancy Pelosi betrayed her own voters betrayed them on this issue she's the one that torpedo student debt relief and she's totally wrong on the constitution of the facts you won't find one because they're too busy kissing

our ass. No, these Democratic leaders are not on your side. They just aren't. They've done this is their dream come true where they tell the donors, don't worry, we didn't do anything, okay? Nothing will fundamentally change. And then go to the voters and go, oh, we tried. We tried. Oh, the Supreme Court. Oh, there was nothing we could do. Their favorite statement of all time. So that's your synopsis of what happened here. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, and the Republicans are kind of enviable in their ability to kind of rally around an idea. and to rally around whatever it is that they're trying to get pushed. You know, they will put in decades, years that they have to just to put forth whatever

initiative that they're after, whether that's Roeby Wade or, you know, whatever. But what we need more from the Democrats is more of that. There's a lot that we can learn from the Republicans. The Republicans love to fight dirty. And more often than not, mostly, unfortunately, they don't really see a whole lot of repercussions for doing so. The Democrats need to take a note, take a hint from the Republicans, fight a little dirtier and fight a little bit stronger. I think part of the reason why, you know, Joe Biden didn't

seem more disappointed today is because he's not disappointed today. And whether that's because he didn't actually want this to go through or maybe, you know, he just didn't expect it to go through is kind of irrelevant. But hopefully that there there is some kind of pivot. I know that this isn't the only blow that higher education has taken today. But, you know, the hope for more equitable tomorrow is not very high right now. The government can still still tackle this issue from a few other angles while working on student loan forgiveness. If they choose to continue this fight, you know, they can look into why higher education is so expensive and work to bring those costs down.

They can try to find alternative ways to make it more accessible to lower income communities. And now to minority communities because they'll need help going forward as well. And I feel like I always come back to this. We have to invest more into our public school systems. Equity in education, I think starts at the bottom, not at the top. We're talking about higher education right now, starts at the bottom. And there are steps that we can take right now to make public schools actual pipelines to colleges and universities so that those students can go on to have good careers, good lives after the fact. Yeah.

Yeah, the last thing I'll say on this is that Democrats fighting dirty or hard, I mean, we're content's away from that. I'll just take them not fighting for the other side, right? Nancy Pelosi saying, hey, this, hey, let me make the Republican case about how this is, we can't do this. Oh, oops, did I throw the case? And you remember Nancy Pelosi does this on every issue on Green New Deal, which was polling at 80% at the time. She said, they call it Green Dream or whatever, okay? And she was completely dismissive because she has, takes tons of bribes from oil and gas companies. tons of millions of dollars

and bribes. I'm sorry, campaign contributions. Mainstream media, are you happy? I know, she's a saint. That and all the insider trading wouldn't affect her at all. She just genuinely thinks the Republicans are always right.

Yeah. She did the clap, though. Oh, that was who when she ripped the paper. So strong. The papers, that was strong. So performative. I just want to read really quickly two more graphics so that when

they attempt this second way to student debt and the Supreme Court totally reverses on a dime. It'll be slightly more ironic. At the end of March, three schools asked the Supreme Court to halt $6 billion in debt relief for 200,000 different student loan borrowers. That's a settlement that Education Department agreed to last summer. So former President Donald Trump actually initiated this lawsuit. It was inherited by Joe Biden when he became president on behalf of borrowers whose borrower defense claims had been stalled at that point. The Supreme Court rejected their request allowing the relief to move forward. That means that at least five of the justices

disagreed with the school's claims that Biden cannot cancel student debt under the Higher Education Act. That's the act that activists now want him to use. So they've already, at least five of them have said, yes, they have the capacity under this to cancel literally billions of dollars of debt. They're going to find some way to reverse on that coming up soon. But I want to say just one more final thing, because I know that everybody in the right is ecstatic about this. And the interesting thing about any group, once you get up to a group size of, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people is that it's relatively diverse. And by that I mean, there are many conservatives burdened by thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in debt,

who I guess are happy about this. everybody that they respect and look up to in politics and the media is happy about this. How many young conservatives that think that Charlie Kirk is like clever or funny or whatever? Like, yeah, they stopped it. And then they look at their bank account and they see the payments that they have to make every month. And that they will have to make every month for years, possibly for decades. Now they'll have a lot of time to make those payments and work towards those payments because if the right gets their way, their retirement is going to be pushed back multiple years.

And how do you live your life seeing that every single financial effect that the people that you look up to most sets you back, holds you down, stops you from living the best life that you could, having the quality of life that you deserve, being able to someday set the weight down and retire, spend time with your family, and that they are cheering for you to be held back in every one of those instances? And today they're cheering. They're cheering, despite the bank account, you know, where they owe thousands of dollars. They can't afford to buy a car, buy a house, start a business, move to a different state. They're cheering their own subjugation. Meanwhile, Congress approved trillions in debt relief for the bankers back in 2008 when the economy crashed. And then billions more, hundreds of billions more for businesses during COVID. All that debt was relieved. And the top companies, all the richest companies in the world got to take home the profits

and the debt relief. And yet the right wing couldn't find a way to protest it. You know, they started by saying, oh, yeah, we're going to do a tea party. We're so mad that the bankers are getting bailed out. And did they do one protest on Wall Street? Not one zero, zero. You know what they did instead? Obamacare, I can't believe you guys, you're going to give us more health care.

Yep. So what happened? So the banker's getting trillions, that's okay. But the average American getting a debt relief, God forbid, God forbid. And you're celebrating today that you yourself got screwed. Congratulations. That's ridiculous. Okay, much more to get to on a number of other topics.

So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John Yasmin, and CD Win 71, they just, you can't remember by hitting the join button below on YouTube, Bruce Salsar, are gifted a membership, and Sweet Dane Dragon gifted 10 American heroes, even if they're not from America. John. And Swadane was gifting on TDR this morning, too. Yes. Calm down, but don't. But don't. But don't. But thank you.

Thank you. Let's jump into it. Michael Roman, who is not a household name, but he was a campaign official on the Trump 2020 campaign, is now cooperating with prosecutors from Jack Smith's team. This is the one into January 6th and the efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results. We have had a number of different developments in the Trump-related. investigations, and as was pointed out there, both on the classified document side, as well as the January 6 side. We have both for you here. But we do need to talk about Mike Roman, director of

Election Day operations for Trump's campaign, and very much involved in a number of the efforts in the months leading between the election to January 6th to try to overturn the results of the election, now has struck some sort of deal with Jack Smith and his legal team, and that could be very significant. Here's a little bit more of the details. Why it matters that Mike Roman is now cooperating is that he may not have to appear before the grand jury in a formal way. He did get a subpoena earlier this year. They did seize his phone a few months ago, so two notable factors there, obviously. He could speak to them in a more informal setting. And it's notable because he's someone who is involved with the fake elector scheme. Well, in fact, in the last

week or so, at least as has been publicly acknowledged, two of those directly involved in the fake elector's scheme have now reached some sort of deal with Jack Smith's team. We don't have all the details of exactly what they've done. But when it comes to Mike Roman, we actually have quite a bit of information that has slowly dribbled out over the last year or so about his involvement. The New York Times had previously reported that Roman was doing much of the legwork and finding ways to challenge Trump's losses in the key battleground states after 2020. He's considered a major part of the plot to send fake election officials to declare falsely that Trump had won Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. Back in July of last year, Politico named

him as a Trump operative who tried to get a list of false electors to Michigan and Wisconsin. Remember that that was not just a state level thing. There were efforts to have that sent directly to Mike Pence. It was going to be sort of the centerpiece of the non-flag wielding window breaking efforts on January 6th. And by the way, in addition to Mike Roman, we also have reporting recently that Rudy Giuliani has voluntarily answered questions from federal prosecutors about the plan involving several members of the former president's inner circle, leading some in the Maga world to wonder if Rudy Giuliani has finally flipped on Donald Trump. I would not jump to conclusions. Rudy has been very loyal to Donald Trump over the years. He has been willing to see his reputation as well as his physical image just absolutely, and tatters as a result of what he's done with Trump. But now multiple people at the very least are cooperating or have accepted immunity deals like Mike Roman. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, Rudy is basically Trump's Igor, and that's he went from being America's mayor to that ignoble fate instead. And if Igor turns on you, you're in a world of drove. Anyway, but that's a long way away. Let's still focus on the things that we know for sure now, okay? So for number one, I think this is. the single most important case against Trump and his allies. Even more important than the national secret documents case. Why? Because he's most likely to get convicted here?

No, it's because this case is the most important in terms of substance and precedent. So this is the very, very heart of what was, what happened on January 6th. Breaking into a building, honestly, is not that big a deal. It's a crime, it should be prosecuted, those are low level guys, they didn't plan. anything, they were the schmucks who showed up and broke the law, okay? Again, they should be prosecuted for their crimes. But the guys who organized the crimes are much more important. And the crime of breaking in, again, is relatively minor compared to the crime of doing a coup against the United States of America to take a Democratic election and overturn it with

things like fake electors. And that's exactly what this is. That's exactly what Trump tried to do, and his allies tried to do, people, I don't know why the press doesn't talk about this more than anything else in the world, that's, I'm just going to leave alone their intentions and their motivations, et cetera. But the bottom line is, this is the one that should get all the attention. And because, guys, if you show that there are real consequences for this kind of attempt, the next time Republicans go to steal an election, let's say Donald Trump goes, hey, you know what, I lost again, but I'd like to stay again, okay? So now we're going to do the fake electorate. thing, then maybe people around him go, well, I remember the last guy who helped

do with the fake electors scheme, he's spending 12 years of Fort Leavenworth. So I'm a little bit gun shy about this coup idea, right? So even if they don't get Trump in this case, just getting everyone involved in the fake elector's scheme would be monumental. Now, in terms of how close we are to that, look, man, this Jack Smith, he's a bad man, as Muhammad Ali used to say. Finally, we have a real prosecutor and I could see it because I'm a lawyer. I've worked for like a nanosecond as a prosecutor, but I can see the actions he's taking up to the case and he's killing it.

Okay, so he's got four people to flip already on Trump, in this case alone, and two of them are electors themselves. Remember, the fake electors signed false documents and sent them into Congress. And so that also gives a real prosecutor like Jack Smith a great card to play. You line on a form, that is on a federal form, that is a significant, you know, crime. And brother, you're in a lot of trouble, okay? And I mean, you signed it, there's no way around it. So now that's why he's getting all these guys to go one by one by one. He's doing dominoes here, which is what a professional great prosecutor does.

Okay, all right, you're going to jail, you're going to jail. Oh, you'd like to talk now, huh? Okay, who put you up to it? There we go. That's how we get to who actually ordered this and actually tried to steal this election. Super important case. Yes, but. Yeah, you know, it's funny that you refer to him as Igor because in my mind,

I always thought of Rudy Giuliani is more of like a Renfield character. But, you know, it's motto kind of the same thing. But it's like what you were saying, this fake elector scheme is so wild that I feel like as much as we talk about it, we don't talk about it enough. It is really crazy. And there does need to be accountability here because if there isn't, that is very, very damaging to this democracy and to this country.

And it's all the more baffling when you remember that who is it? I think Pete Navarro, he basically confessed to the whole scheme and explain the plot on live television one time on MSNBC. You know, we're really seeing Jack Smith and his team really honed. in on the inner circle right now. And honestly, I feel like a lot of Americans are eager for them to wrap this up because, you know, as a nation, we really need to move on. Americans have real issues that frankly are more important to them the short term than whether or not Trump goes to jail. There are real issues facing real Americans that need to be dealt with. But we're still

stuck in courts going through this rigmarole with Trump. Of course, it's all connected. We can't govern effectively if our democracy is in tatters. And of course, we need to get accountability here. And we have to get this thing right. All of that said, the quicker these people can cooperate, the better off will all be. The more grateful I will be, I know for sure. Yeah. I personally hope that we at least wrap up all of these investigations in time for Trump to beat Biden in 2024, get back into offices and start breaking new laws. Yeah.

I don't want to have to mix it multiple seasons. It gets complex. Yeah. Okay, real quick, though, last thing. It gets a little muddled. Peter Navarro not only admitted it on TV, he wrote a whole book about it. And now that we have a real prosecutor on the case, God help him. Okay, so we'll see how that goes.

And guys, last thing, the reason why I say this is the most important case is, look, Trump taking home national security documents is terrible and a huge violation of the law. But it's kind of a one-off, right? Like, all right, so a bunch of them take him home. It's a bad precedent. We don't want you to taking them home. We don't want you selling them. We don't want any of that, right?

But it doesn't fundamentally affect our democracy. Whether you create fake electors to steal an election, that's a coup against our government. That affects our democracy 100%. So this is definitely the most important case. I'm thrilled that Jack Smith saw it. Yeah, and it's not, it's like barely speculative that they will try this in the future. They are clearly in the intervening years trying to set up to do this in swing states again. Okay, with that said, why don't we

from the violence attack against our government and move from the results of this violence attack against our government and move to another attempted violence attack against our government? A former rioter from January 6th from Seattle named Taylor Toronto was arrested near the home of former president Barack Obama and his family. He had a van and in the van were firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, as well as material to make explosives. Thankfully, he was stopped. He didn't make it past any checkpoints. Although when he was apprehended by Secret Service, he was running towards the Obama's house. I would run in the opposite direction of that point once you're being pursued by the Secret Service, but he was committed. He was apparently spotted within blocks of the Obama's home. According to law enforcement, he fled, Secret Service chased him, they eventually apprehended him.

And yeah, he had parts to make explosives, he had bragged on a live stream about having some sort of detonator, and he had 400 rounds of ammunition, which seems to a rational person to be a lot, but I don't know for the right wing. In any event, it was his online activity, which he was a very big fan of Donald Trump, love to post, love to stream. Here's a little bit about how he was tracked down. Officials say Taylor Taranto made threats on an internet live stream and had an arrest warrant related to the January 6th insurrection. What happened yesterday was the Capitol Police seeing some of his live streams showing that he was in Washington and statements that they interpreted as being threatened, threatening to members of Congress, put out a bolo, beyond the lookout for this individual, if he's seen, the U.S. Secret Service uniform division, which is on patrol in the neighborhood where President Obama, former President Obama lives, spots him. They do the stop. His van, which he seems to be living out of, is parked a short distance away. They look in the van, see very concerning things called the bomb squads. What they have is materials to make Molotov cocktails, bottles, rags, fuel, numerous handguns, one rifle.

So look, at this point, you know, you're going to want to try to understand how something this crazy could come so close to happening. We want to know what we can find out about this individual. Well, his van had the word patriots win on the side, which is either a statement of FALT to MAGA or he's a fan of the football team. I don't know. In any event, he had been retweeting or retruthing, I suppose, Donald Trump, including a post that Donald Trump had posted that linked to a 2017 opinion piece by Phyllis Schlafly that included details allegedly allowing one to track down where Obama lived. the individual or at least a guy with the exact same name as the guy said got him surrounded as a result of that. So we can't necessarily say from this exactly how committed to Trump he was, but he was a participant on January 6th. He has been evading accountability ever since and he now had something that he wanted to get done at the Obama's home. But I'm sure the right,

who will definitely be covering this tonight on Fox News will take it seriously. Yeah. So I don't know why this is not a bigger deal. And I don't often say that. I usually tell you why I think here's the motivation of XYZ. But Barack Obama is beloved by the media. And this is a, and so is Michelle Obama. And this is a direct threat to their lives. This guy was going to try to kill them apparently. That's a big deal that a former president is dealing with this situation. And by the way, the other former president is the one who does. docks them. Like, this is madness. I don't know why this story, like, it's getting covered a little bit, but it seems like a giant story to me. And part of the reason why I think it's gigantic, and maybe this is why the press isn't giving it more attention, is because I don't think it's random at all.

You know, they say, oh, this random guy, oh, look at that. It's another potential act of violence against someone on the left. What do you mean random? It happens all the time. So the minute there was any kind of physical action by left wing activists, like with that Riley Gaines or whatever, and they had her trapped in a room, no one even touched her. But we went apoplectic, don't do that, make sure that she's safe and we don't take any physical

action. But like, that's the closest anybody gets on the left. The right wing's like, oh yeah, threatened assassination there, broke into Nancy Pelosi's house, smashes her husband's head in with an hammer, shootings, this. that, the old guy pulls up with a van filled with bombs right in front of the White House or the Capitol, and the Supreme Court, I mean, on and on and on. It's not random. It's called stochastic terrorism, which ironically does mean random.

But what it means is that the egg folks on in their audience, and they know a certain percentage of them are lunatics. And they tell them violence is great, guns are awesome. That is why 28% of Republicans in polling say that it might be time for violence. 28%. That's tens of millions of people. So what the right wing has done is they have weaponized their radicals and then sent them out into the world to harm the rest of us. So I think there's a huge story.

Thank God the Obamas are safe. And by the way, I don't ever want another right wing are talking about doxing. I hate doxing. I don't want anything to do with it. I don't think anyone on the left should do it, but the right wing's like, oh, Trump told him where Obama lives, and then one of our usual radicals, whoops, did he show up with bombs and weapons to murder them? Okay, no, no, okay, you guys, giant glass of shut up juice for every right winger

online complaining about Taylor Lorenz once showed like the business address that's public of someone, and I'm pretending to have hurt feelings over it. You guys are liars, you love doxing people. Oh, Brett Kavanaugh. Oh my God, they complain about Brett Kavanaugh in front of his home. They go to murder Obama in front of his own home. I don't hear anything, right wing, where are you? Are you outraged?

Are you looking at past laws now? Nothing, because you kind of like it. So why don't you admit it? Yes. Yeah, you know what kind of stood out to me with all of this? And I don't know if you actually mentioned this, John, but the guy noted that the Obama house was near a mosque. It's like, yeah, there are mosques everywhere.

And the reason why I'm even bringing this up is because I tend to forget how easily people can maintain their own bubble of even mental protection, even when they're out in the world and even when they leave, they're often very insular communities. You know, people who tend to be racist and fearful of people that they perceive to be different from them are often isolated from the people that they've chosen to fear or hate. They don't know them personally. They usually don't have meaningful or regular interactions with them. And the fact that a mosque happened to be nearby shouldn't have been unusual or surprising or even notable, especially not in Washington, D.C. You know, we're all living in this country together. There are all kinds of people and communities living side by side. And most of the time, they're not bothering each other.

Most people get that. I think the mosque comment speaks volumes as far as how deep this man's ignorance actually goes. Yeah, 100%. Okay, I think we should probably take our second break at the hour, but much more to get to. Don't go anywhere. Tommy, Tommy just joined. Get a little of this, remain comduring gifted a membership. Bruce Salazar came back and gifted five more. And lately the biggest American heroes, Athletes LLC,

another 20 young Turks memberships. And I love them even more because yesterday they disagreed about the affirmative action case. We had a nice back and forth during the social breaks. But still part of the community, and that is our community. Nice. We could have good disagreements and go, hey, Oh, that's a good point, that's an interesting point, and learn from one another. All right?

I like it. Yep. I think athletes LLC should be the only LLC allowed to vote in elections, and that's your transition. Think about it. Let's jump into this. For months now, the state legislature of Delaware has been debating whether the town of Seaford should be allowed to let corporations vote directly in elections. Like literally, don't mean contributing to candidates running. support, no, literally the entity, the business entity, would vote as if it was a person.

Somewhere Mitt Romney is loving this. Corporations are people, it turns out potentially. Well, we have an update. Delaware House of Representatives has now voted in favor of the corporations, allowing them to directly vote as if they were humans. Now, that's not the end of it. We do need to find out what the Delaware Senate is going to do, but it is certainly not looking good. The Republicans are pushing hard for this. Democrats seem to be perfectly willing to allow it to happen.

So if you haven't been following this, we're going to catch you up a little bit. In April, the town of Seaford amended its charter to give LLC's corporations, trusts or partnerships the right to vote in local elections. Now, you probably have long thought of voting as a one person, one vote sort of thing, but now it will be one person entity one vote. Someday we'll be broadcasting 20 years from now, it'll be one person entity instance of chat GPT that's allowed to vote. You don't think they'll do it? This is where they're at right now.

Under the proposal, corporate entities must register as voters within City Hall and include a list of their beneficial owners. City officials are then intended to cross-check these lists with resident voter rolls to prevent double voting. So in theory, if this system works the way it's supposed to, you would not have a corporation and the corporation's CEO both voting, but if the CEO doesn't even live there, effectively still gets a vote, even though, again, it's not a person. So anyway, look, that's an issue, philosophically, ideologically. This seems like incredibly dangerous territory to be entering into, but it's also substantively terrible territory to be entering into for Seaford because it is a very small town. Just 340 people there voted in the most recent elections on April 15th,

the bill would potentially provide as many as 234 votes to businesses in the community, which means that if it ever came down to the people versus the corporations, the corporations would have an okay chance of winning out. Anyway, the Delaware state legislature has taken up and then removed the bill multiple times. Yesterday they actually voted against it, and then the Republicans pulled their Trump car. They staged a walk out on Thursday night after blocking passage of Delaware's proposed $1.4 billion capital budget. That was an attempt to force the Democrats to now support this, and it worked. The legislative session was about to end, and so the Democrats either didn't have much time or secretly don't have that big of a

problem with it. I don't know which is the case, but the end result is the same. They've given their stamp of approval to this sort of thing. But don't worry, I'm sure it will never spread to any other towns or cities or states. This will be where it ends. Yeah, so this is an excellent microcosm of the lunatic state of our politics in America. So already in 17 different jurisdictions in Delaware, LLCs can vote. In one case, a guy voted for 31 different LLCs he had set up and himself. I think he voted 32 times.

And then that's why they had to put in another provision going, well, we do want corporations to run everything. But this one makes us look a little awkward, right? So we're going to say, all right, we're going to roll that back. You could only vote once for a corporation, which then leads to a great question that one of our members asked on another day that we covered this story, who, who gets the vote for the corporation? because the corporation is not actually a person.

I know they're saying by law, they're people and they're above people. They're like gods now, right? And they have all of our rights plus extra corporate rights. But who is it? Is it the secretary? Is it the CEO? The board? Is it the board?

Shareholders? Is it the editor? Who is it? Right? And so this is absurd. It's totally. It's insanity. But to John's point about, hey, there's 234 corporate.

that in Seaford, they can easily out vote the population because the population is going to be split on most votes anyway, right? And the corporation is just whatever's to their advantage. Like, hey, we're going to pay zero taxes. Hey, look at that. All 234 corporations agree, right? And so they can outvote people. So why would the politicians allow the corporations to control who wins every election? Oh, because they're the same corrupt politicians that are proposing these laws. that means they're already in corporate back pocket.

And so if they're servants of the corporate class, which they obviously are, I mean, they're passing these insane, certifiably insane laws saying, oh yeah, corporations are a human being and has constitutional rights. Well, yeah, sure. That guy is already 100% corrupt. And he thinks, and he thinks, hey, if my corporate donors that just bribe me now can vote, they don't even need, like we can cut out the middleman. Democracy is dead, I rule forever, because I'm already serving them.

So, and it's not just Republicans. So Republicans do this. And by the way, hey, if you're a Republican out there and you thought you were with the populist party and the Democrats were the elitist, well, jokes on you. The Republicans are 10,000 times more corrupt. And the Democrats are plenty corrupt. I'm getting to them, okay? But the Republicans are like, no, we serve corporate America, corporate agents, we love you. Take our rights, take our rights.

And we don't want him. Oh, the rich win again, yes. That's who Republican politicians are. Period. Look at them. They're like, you're not going to let corporations vote? How dare you? Then average American might win.

We don't want the average American winning. We're walking out. We're in raids. So what are the loser Democrats do? Because they're corrupt too. It's good cop, bad cop. You're just playing a game on you. Right?

The Democrats could put together a prize. press conferences say, these Republicans show their faces, give their names and go, think that corporations are people and should outvote you, should outvote you. And you know how many people think that corporations are actual people that should be able to outvote you? Even if you take it to Republican voters. And here there's a giant distinction between Republican politicians and Republican voters. If you take the Republican voters, go, hey, you want to give away your vote to a company

that's kicking your ass and taking your wages and taking away your dignity? in respect. They're going to go, no, that's stupid. I don't want that. The Democratic voters hate it and don't want it at all. But look at that. The Democratic politicians, instead of fighting back on an issue where they'd have about 90% approval, like, oh, there was nothing we could do. They walked out. I mean, what could we do, fight back? I guess we had to surrender to the same donors. We're the good cops, though. We're the good cops. It passed the Delaware House, not the Alabama house. Delaware is theoretically a blue state. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's partly why it's so concerning. But also like if churches are going to be voting in secular governmental

elections, are they going to be paying taxes too? Are the corporations going to be paying the taxes that they're already supposed to be paying and maybe aren't paying? Yeah, this takes us one step closer to the United States of America Incorporated. Everyday Americans are struggling for representation in our government and we are being fought at every turn. I live in Texas, I know all about this, whether that's through, you know, gerrymandering and redistricting or more stringent voter ID laws or, you know, more stringent ballot application processes or less access to polling locations. Meanwhile, these companies are all about to get an official voice in our government.

Hopefully it doesn't spread beyond Delaware, but I think we can all see the writing in the wall as far as that's concerned. And by the way, we're already out here trying to assert our humanity against AIs. Things are rough out here for human beings. Corporations are not people. They're run by people and those people are already voting in election. So I don't understand why they would get double representation in this way. This is just another example of moneyed interest having unfair advantages. And what's supposed to be a democratic society.

You know, this is akin to buying votes and it opens up the door for a lot of corruption potentially even to foreign intervention in our local elections. Yeah. Yeah, look, I don't understand why they would get double double votes, but I also don't understand why they get double donations, why they get double speech insofar as money as speech. I agree with you, by the way, that they would not win an argument where they're like, do you want to give your right away to a corporation, which is why they don't engage in that argument. They instead say, hey, look, there's a trans field hockey player, go get them. And then you don't actually have that conversation. I will also say if one

vote, you know, one person, one vote can become one person, one entity, one vote, and we We theoretically live in a representative democracy, a republic, where your elected leaders are supposed to be reflective, representative of the voter base. Well, in Seaford, the voting base very soon will be like 40% corporations. So how far of a leap is it to say that their representation should reflect that? Why can't you run a corporation as the candidate? I mean, it sounds crazy, but I also never thought they'd give, you know, Nestle the ability to vote in a direct election.

So I don't know, maybe some point they will cut out the middleman. not only of the voter, but also of the politicians that they buy, and they'll just take the spots themselves. John, the brilliant point, Yasmin, also brilliant point. So I'm looking forward to President Exxon Mobil. That should be fun for everybody. And Timothy Pulliam also with an Exxon point. He's a member of ours on YouTube, and we love doing the show with our members, so hit the join button below, said, time to start a bunch of LLCs. Ding, ding, ding, there we go. I wish TYT had more resources because I would literally organize two things for you. you guys. I would organize you guys all setting up LLCs in Delaware, okay? And that's not

that hard a thing to do. And put them in Seaford. And let's have a thousand progressive LLCs. And by the way, you don't have to live there. That's part of the magic of these rules. So the guys with the LLCs, they don't even live in Delaware. They live in like, they can live in $10 too. It doesn't matter, right? So wherever you are, you can set up an LLC in Delaware and be like, okay, now I'm voting. And look at that. We have a thousand progressive LLCs. What are you going to do now? What are you going to do? What I thought corporations were people, my friend, okay? And secondly, Asma's point about churches.

Yeah, these guys are insane. They have churches voting. Who votes at the church? Is it a parishioner? Is it the deacon? Is it a pastor? By the way, is it an imam? Oh, wait a minute.

If churches are human beings, are mosques human beings, how about we set up a thousand mosques in Seashore, Delaware? Why not? Why not? Now everybody's voting. How about couches? I'm gonna send my couch to vote in Delaware. Because as long as we're making up stuff, you know what?

Guys, pull up the picture. I think these are the next folks who should control Delaware's elections, okay? So go ahead, put them up. There they are. Oh, my God. Okay, Squishmallows are now citizens and can vote. Who votes for them? I don't know, who votes for a company, who votes for a church?

Same person that's gonna vote for the squish mallow, all right? And it is what it is. Okay. Hey, as long as we're in Allison Wonderland, and you guys are making up crap. Okay, let's do it. Hashtag squish the vote. Ridiculous. That's catchy.

I like that. Yeah. Oh, my God. The world we live in. Okay, I'm not playing. If they keep this up, we're going to go set up thousands of corporations at mosques. And I guarantee, here's one thing that'll turn people around right away. A couple of mosques voting.

Yep. And put that on Fox News and all of a sudden, they're like, What is this? We didn't expect this. We thought only Christians got to vote twice. Okay, oh, okay, all of a sudden, get your ass in line now. People are people. Human beings are human beings.

Not corporations or churches or however else you want to rig an election because you hate democracy. By the way, chapter four of my book is all about this, how corporations slowly took over our government. We live under corporate goddamn rule and they took over the. Republican Party and most importantly, also the Democratic Party. T.wit.com slash justice to pre-order the book. Nice. And see how we got into this crazy world to begin with.

And chapter five explains it, because the media is the matrix, the most important corporate machine that goes, no, I don't say anything wrong. Corporations voting, but I don't think that's a big issue. I think that's normal. Corporation is giving millions of dollars to politicians. Oh, that's not a bribe, they're just talking to them. Oh, where did that money wind up? Oh, wound up in ads at my company.

Oh, did it? Am I the biggest benefactor of corruption? Is that why I don't see it at all? And I think corporations and squish mellows should be allowed to vote? Oh, I guess I'm the Matrix, right? That's American mainstream media for your corporate media. That's Chapter 5. All right, check it out.

Check out, Yasmin, on the breakdown. She's amazing. and apparently a great soul and a genius and all that we determined it today. Yes, I'm the thing. And of course, check out damage report. All right, we got an amazing second hour coming up for you guys filled with,

unfortunately, just as crazy stories, including a giant, the second giant Supreme Court decision of today. We'll be back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash

t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon