The Young Turks - ""No to War!""

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Russian tanks entered the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, on Friday morning as the city was rocked by explosions and gunfire. An entire garrison of 13 Ukrainian border guards was killed in the first day of fighting on the nation’s Snake Island after the soldiers refused to surrender to invading Russian forces. Over 1,000 Russians were arrested for protesting Putin’s Ukraine invasion. President Joe Biden will nominate federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Tucker Carlson blamed Putin for the aggression that he has been defending for months. 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. Bexie! Bexie! Bechee! Big my team! Bigotschee!

Bigotee! Drop it. All right, back on TYT, Jank Uger, John Irola, Ben Corolla with you guys. Ben's obviously host of Galaxy Brain on Twitch.tv slash TYT, John's host of Damage Report. This is a Youngst Power Panel, that's what it is. How you all doing? You know, the world. Yes, agreed, agreed, indeed.

So guys, lots of news for you, including non-Ukrainian news. But before we get to that, lots of Ukrainian news. So obviously we're in the middle of a war, not America, kind of, but Russian Ukraine are. It really is unprecedented, and we have very compelling news for you guys today, so don't go anywhere. John, let's get right to it. We do in fact have that, both on this topic and a number of others. The situation in Ukraine is developing fast and the next eight to 24 hours could be incredibly

significant. It could see the fall of the Ukrainian capital because Russian troops have now entered it. Ukraine's defense ministry has said fighting is taking place on the city's northern outskirts. Small arms, assault rifles are being freely distributed and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also urged residents on Twitter to both report the movements of Russian equipment and remain inside but quote, make Molotov cocktails. The government said it had preemptively destroyed three bridges north of the Capitol in an effort to stymied the advance, specifically the large number of tanks that Russia has brought. I've also read unconfirmed reports that a group

of graduate students at one of the top technical academies has been mass producing Molotov cocktails, obviously the sort of thing you do in an incredibly dangerous and dicey situation. There were reports of at least 25 civilians already having been killed, 102 injured. Those numbers are preliminary and almost certainly inaccurate. Over 100,000 are believed to have already fled the country that will almost certainly rise to the millions. At least 137 soldiers have also already been killed. In addition to that, we have some breaking news. President Zelensky says that this night Russia is going to launch an assault on Kyiv.

We will stand our ground. The fate of Ukraine is being decided now, predicting the possibility that it could fall. And we've also just recently had a vote for a cessation of hostilities in the UN Security Council. China, India, and the UAE abstained from the vote. Russia vetoed it. of describing the problem with that set up right there. A little bit biased, one might say, but anyway, there is a lot going on, including a lot we haven't yet touched on, so what do you think?

So first off, I think the Ukrainians are incredibly brave. We're gonna get to more videos from their leader on the streets of Kiev and also the mayor of Kiev, and you might recognize him. I have so much admiration for all of their courage. And the other folks that I want to give a shout out to is the peace protesters in Russia, arrested by the thousands, we'll get to them later in the program in more detail, but also incredible bravery in a country led by Putin. So I don't believe the Russians want to be at war.

The Ukrainians certainly don't want to be at war. They're the ones who try to avoid war the most out of all the parties, understandably so. They've been dragged into this war, and now they're standing and fighting. Nothing but incredible bravery throughout, and we've got details of that coming up. Any thoughts, Ben? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, this is one of those things where, like, I mean, President Zelensky's saying that things are going to be decided, like, you know, basically in the next couple of days,

I think it's super accurate because one of the things that's important to understand is, like maintaining a military occupation, it puts an extreme strain on like the resources of a country. And Russia just simply doesn't have the material capability to maintain any term, any long-term counterinsurgency. So really the actions of the people within Ukraine are going to play a huge role, especially over the next couple of days, in terms of whether or not they're able to sort of stop the Russian forces from advancing too far. because it's not something that they're going to be able to keep up long term. And so that's where like these critical moments are like such a big deal. But it's one of those things where like, I mean, when there's like a war going on and you're in a high stress situation like this, you lose sleep, right?

You, you know, people are put in a very difficult situation. And a lot of the people in Ukraine, they're just civilians, right? They're making maltob cocktails. So they're not necessarily like, you know, fully aware of all the different like strategic things to do. But that's kind of one of those things where it's a disadvantage and an advantage, where mistakes cost lives, but randomness creates confusion that the Russian military will probably have a difficult time dealing with. Yeah, and look, I think it's only natural for us to admire and try to highlight the bravery.

Obviously, we would like to imagine that anyone would do this in defense of their home, that we would do this. And like Jenks said, we've got some amazing video to show you. and there's a lot of stuff going around virally. Of course, it is also incredibly sad and incredibly dangerous. You know, for the country to be in a position where they're distributing, you know, AK-47s to the population, okay, that, you know, we can say that's courageous and all that. Random civilians armed with assault rifles going up against Russian heavy armor is a disaster,

an absolute disaster. It's incredibly admirable, but many will die. We make this criticism of the right wingers here who are constantly saying like, oh no, my militia is running around the woods in Michigan or whatever. Like, you know, if the time comes, we'll overthrow the US government. It's a pretty high ask, and a lot of people will unfortunately die as a result. Yeah, I mean, we don't know where this war is going to end. They can kill tons and tons of Ukrainians.

So, I mean, it's just begun. So let's get to the videos. Exactly. Well, this we don't have a translation for, so I will be reading it. But President Zelensky of Ukraine wanted to reassure the population that he was still there because some people might not know in the chaos. And obviously there is, we are maxed out on misinformation flowing around in social media right now. And so trying to convince the population that he has fled as a common tactic in these sorts of situations. In any event, he has posted a video of himself and his team outside the presidential administration in the capital. capital saying we are here, we are in Kyiv, we are defending Ukraine, and so we will see. He goes on to say that Russian forces were hunting for him and his family. He also told leaders of the European Union that quote, this might be the last time you see me alive. Yeah, no, that was powerful.

So it was a short video I watched it and obviously saw the translation of it. And he kept saying we are here and he would name one minister after another and after another saying he is here, he is here, and the citizens are here and we're here to fight. And now this is the guy who tried to prevent the war in a thousand different ways. And when the war came to him, he said, now we stand our ground. So I just thought it was such a powerful video to see them doing that. And then to hear that quote, this might be the last time you see me alive to European Union leaders. That was a hell of a thing. And by the way, also possible.

So to John's point about the weapons, yeah, we're going to cover that a little bit later to the Charlie Kirk clowns of the world saying, oh, if they just had more guns, everything would be fine. No, we might get to, you know, combat in the streets and where the citizens can make a difference and these brave folks can make a difference. But in the beginning, the cruise missiles will not be affected by the hand-to-hand fighting. So that, and if a cruise missile lands on the president or the mayor, that's that. as you're going to see in a later video. It didn't happen to them, but it did happen already to Ukrainian soldiers. Yeah, yeah, and it's just like, I mean, this is one of those things where like, and we talk about bravery, but like at a certain point, this is bravery by necessity, right? Like they had to ban, you know, you know, basically men from 18 to 60 from leaving the country because, you know, it's like, it's one of those things where like it is bravery, but it's one of those things where we should really just be thinking. about the position people are forced into, right? Like 18 year olds, they're kids, right? That's really, really young, right? I mean, I know I joined the military when I was 18, but like I think that I was too young to be in the military, right? And I, it just is really

heartbreaking to see people in positions where they sort of have to like give up their lives because, I mean, because really like let's be real, all of this is happening because Putin is trying to make money off, you know, Ukraine right now. By the way, you know, seeing the video going around of him that he's not leaving and he could have, he could have yesterday, he could have three weeks ago if he wanted to. It just makes the, not to make this about us, because we're not what matters, they're what matters, but like the political cowardice of our own leaders, like whether it's laughable stuff, like you know, Trump telling the January 6 protesters, we're going to the Capitol, I'm going

with you and then he just goes home and watches TV or Obama telling people, you know what, But when I get elected and you, you go on strike, I'm gonna be putting on, what was of my picketing shoes or whatever? Like, they won't stand by people when there's no danger, when there's like dumb hypothetical political danger. It's just, it's really sad. In any event, we do have information about maybe how this could develop in terms of resolving the situation. Vladimir Putin called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow the government and take power into your own hands, explicitly demanding regime change is a precondition for the peace talks. He goes on to say, it seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than

with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who occupied Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage. So those are the sorts of, you know, talking points, the propaganda that he has been saying in the realm to this and that you've probably come across on social media from people who should know better. But I'll just say real quick on that, yeah, you know what's a neo-Nazi move invading another country and saying, oh, it's to protect the homeland. That's actually literally what the Nazis did.

And even Drudge Report had a picture of Putin and comparing him to Hitler, the new Hitler today. And I think that that is a fair comparison. On the other hand, lunatics like Jimmy Dora and Max Blumenthal, we're still talking about how the Ukrainians are neo-Nazis, the same exact talking point as Vladimir Putin. And those guys are disgusting and nowhere near progressive, John. Well, we also have a little bit of, I use the word counterattack, I mean non-militarily, but the US has joined the EU and the UK in new sanctions targeting both Vladimir Putin directly as well as some other oligarchs.

How effective those will be, how effective they can be is definitely disputed because of Vladimir Putin for a very long time. had a complicated network of shell corporations as well as other intermediaries, individuals that can be used to hide absolutely vast quantities of wealth. So God only knows if that'll have any effect whatsoever, but that is what they're doing as of right now. And by the way, this came out just before we went live. Biden has also now asked Congress to authorize 6.4 billion in humanitarian and defense aid for Ukraine. Yeah, okay, yes.

Now normally when we sell weapons other countries, it's totally needless and a bad idea. And sometimes horrible thing to do because we'll send it to Saudi Arabia and they'll murder the citizens of Yemen with it. But in this case, if ever there was a time to send weapons, this is it. Guys, 190,000 troops moving into a country, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. That is, it's unprecedented in my lifetime. So this is a giant news event. I'm going to skip forward to two things here. One is the Klitschko's.

So Vitaly Klitschko is the mayor of Ukraine. If that name sounds a little familiar to you, it's because he was also the world heavyweight champion in boxing. And his brother was also a boxing champ. There they are together. One is the mayor, and the other one enlisted in the reserves, I think about a month ago. And they asked them, what are you going to do? Now understand, they're multi-millionaires, okay? They're incredibly famous, incredibly wealth.

incredibly wealthy. They said we will go to the streets and we will protect our homes. Vitaly Klitschko said, it's already a bloody war, I don't have another choice, I have to do that, I would fight. That's what men do. So I thought it was incredibly strong of them to do that. Now you might say, oh yeah, it's normal. Yeah, well, you know, if the Russians are inviting your hometown, are you sure that you

stay and fight in the streets, and especially given their situations. So Zelensky, the Klitschkoes, all of them, incredible bravery. Saw a video of a dad saying goodbye to his daughter, his young daughter. It's near impossible not to cry at that scene as he hugs her tight, knowing again, like Zelensky said, it might be the last time she sees him alive as he puts are on a train to leave the country. So in my lifetime, you know, there's been wars, obviously, Iraq and Afghanistan and God, we've started so many bloody conflicts across the world, right? But when you start a war in Europe, historically it ends in the most tragic ways that

you could imagine. And I have to keep reminding people, Russia has. nukes. And the video we played for you yesterday of Putin saying, you know, any country that opposes us will regret it and they should know what our capabilities are. Now everyone agrees he was implicit for what it's worth. The experts seem to agree he was implicitly threatening nukes. He's in a corner here. The Russian market is collapsed, not completely collapsed, but cratered. And there's great discontent in Russia with this action. People, not just peace protesters, which there are untold numbers in the streets, but people saying our economy was

already in bad shape. Now it's going to be pulverized. So he's taking a huge gamble here, as we talked about on yesterday's show. And if it goes well for him, that's a disaster. If it goes badly for them, that's a different kind of disaster. And that's what I'm worried about. And then I want to read you this next graphic we had up there. 13 Ukrainian border guards who were killed after refusing to surrender. Tiny Snake Island, the Black Sea to a Russian warship will receive the honor of hero of Ukraine. President Volun Zelensky announced on Thursday, Snake Island is 30 miles off the coast of Ukraine in less than 0.1 square.

square miles in area. You know why? A Russian warship approached the island said, you must surrender. We have the video. Let's take a look. All right. I'm a Crabble, I'll say you.

I'm going to hold the order in fact and he's by you're going to attack. How many I'm in

pre-em? Well, that. I don't want to I'm nothue too, I know. But all

any other what's all I'm all right. Thank you everybody carabble, go to

go and So their last words were, this is it, Russian worship, go F yourself. I got a missile, all 13 are dead. It sounded like it was a female voice in one of the people that was talking there. 10% of the Ukrainian military are women and they are in combat positions. They're ready. And put yourself in that position. You know you're you're going to die and that was their response and it seems to be the response of the whole country and I love them for it yeah by the way it's sort of related to that I totally understandably that video like you see that and you you just you can't

help but admire and even if you can't necessarily even understand the bravery I mean that is that is an amazing thing there's a lot of other stories that like that going around I saw this bear in mind any any of this could in the end turn out to be apocryphal But it's thematic. A Ukrainian woman told a Russian soldier, put sunflower seeds in your pocket so that they'll grow when you die. But that's the thing, like all of this is obviously inspiring. We don't want anyone to be in this sort of position situation. I don't want any of, I don't want Ukrainians to be brave, honestly.

I would love for them to have just gone about their days, continued with their jobs, spent time with their families, I don't want any of this. I don't want the Russian soldiers that have died. Did any of them sign up thinking, oh good, maybe someday Vladimir Putin will decide to reconstitute whether a name or not the Soviet Union and send us abroad to fight? I don't want any of this, got no interest in it. I'm anti-war not just as a policy measure, but as a fundamental part of my value system. I hate every single bit of this and there is, I cannot help but think about the massive

opportunity cost for the people, for us as a planet. We could accomplish almost anything and yet we're just constantly doing this and not just Russia are our support for the war on Yemen our own recent wars in multiple countries like we haven't necessarily generated viral videos like on Snake Island but look at all the people that we've killed in a number of different countries absolutely reprehensible we need to move past it as a people as a society as a planet so Ben you were in the military and you know you could have been on the wrong end of that and but you were also involved in the drone program

And I know we talked about it in the past about how heartbreaking that was. What was your reaction to that Snake Island video? I mean, it's like it's absolutely heartbreaking, right? It's absolutely heartbreaking. And like, I don't know, it's really just difficult to put into words because like it's just, I mean, to me it's frustrating because I've seen this develop. Like I've watched this develop over the past 10 years, right? Like I knew a thing or two about Ukraine while I was in the military and it just, it just, Everything about this is just really, really frustrating because, like, Vladimir Putin is cynically

using the existence of the Azov Battalion, which is a problem, but like that a problem is not, like the solution that is not literally invading an entire country and killing a ton of people in the process, right? Like there were a million different diplomatic solutions to this. And literally a week ago, as President Zelensky was asking everybody to calm things down, Right, the United States and Canada were playing this big tough guy game versus Putin. And Putin literally now has followed up by invading. And, you know, like all of this is just instead of following this diplomatic solution. And it's just like another instance of young people, right? Because like look, if they're in the military, I'm gonna make the assumption that they're

young people losing their lives because just the handful of people are trying to make money, right? You have defense contractors in the United States trying to make money, right? And that's why like the The United States has been like trying to escalate things with Russia. Russia is trying to make money off of natural resources in eastern Ukraine. And so like now we're in this situation where people are losing their lives because like rich people are like rich people in countries that are like neither of them are Ukraine, right? Are trying to basically just like use Ukraine as like this just profit making machine. And it's just absolutely infuriating.

And like I don't like it's it's really really just heartbreak to see those people in those situation. And like I think one of the most frustrating parts about it is because the only reason like Russia has like the economic ability to even do what it's doing right now is because they were well relying on trade with China. And if the United States really wanted to, they could run a hard bargain with China and basically say like hey, we could concede like some of the South China Sea will back away or something like you know all we ask is like for you to put some pressure on Ukraine. But the United States isn't willing to give up turf in other parts of the world to have a bargaining chip with China. And so we're just sitting and watching this

happening and defense contractors are gleeful as they're making profits off of this when it's literally people's lives that are at stake. And it's the same thing that I saw when I was in the military, people losing their lives for one person's profit or another. And it's it's absolutely heartbreaking to see this playing out right now in Ukraine. where people are forced into a situation where bravery is their only option. Yes, and the Russian people are putting as much pressure as they can on their own government, but that's the problem with an authoritarian leader like Putin, you know, other than his own money, I don't know what other pressure you could put on. And by the way, here in America,

we and others were putting pressure on Biden to get tougher on Russia and the oligarchs of Putin himself, specifically and it turns out today they did in fact do sanctions on Putin himself which they had weirdly mysteriously reserved yesterday but they have now engaged in that so last thing here for now and then we've got more stories about the Russian protesters etc is that look we don't know how it's gonna end it could be that after a little while Russia withdraws but then Putin would, you know, potentially be greatly embarrassed and he might lose a lot of leverage in power, et cetera. And so he's going to be very unwilling to do that, knowing Putin.

If it escalates, is it a street by street combat in Kiev? Or do they obliterate it? Do they start bombing the government buildings and just absolutely destroy Ukraine? And what happens afterwards? What kind of resistance is there? Do people from other countries start to come into Ukraine to help the Ukrainians fight against the Russians? I don't know, but none of these scenarios are good. And as you see that incredible bravery by the Ukrainians, of course, it makes me want to scream, I'm a Ukrainian, and I want to help, and, and, you know, all of our hearts go out to them. Also remember that super brave guy who told the Russian warship to go off itself, you know, he's somebody's son and maybe somebody's dad and that's the last

words they ever heard from him. Yeah. So that's what war mongers like Vladimir Putin do. And God damn anyone who supported him here. Okay with that we're gonna take our first break. We come back. We are going to show you a little bit from the protests that are still ongoing in Russia as well as breaking down Biden's first pick for the Supreme Court after this. Back on TYT, Jank, John and Ben with you guys, John, take it away. Okay, well actually I'm going to allow people apparently in cities throughout Russia to take away. Let's take a look at this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

So what you have there is a mashup of scenes of protest, specifically from Moscow, from, you know, as of local time last night chanting no to war in protest of Putin's move in invading Ukraine. There are a lot of people. You're seeing the numbers appearing to grow after the first day. Now technically the only legal form of public protest in Russia is so-called solo pickets. They're non-organized and thus legally sanctioned protests. But those have been spread in a number of regions as well. And as you might expect, the clamp down on the protest, violence against protesters as well as mass arrests, those have been accelerating too. With the independent monitoring group OVD Info tweeting Thursday that as of 11.30 p.m. in Moscow, at least 1,705 people had been

detained across dozens of Russian cities. Some specific examples have been profiled, including by the Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, Andrew Roth. He showed one individual holding up a sign and then very shortly thereafter saying he was detained within a second of holding up that sign, arrests are getting a lot rougher. Even here in the US where we at least hypothetically have certain rights in the Bill of Rights, including assembly, we've seen massive violence against protesters here. There doing this in the midst of an invasion is again an act of of bravery, because mass arrests, that seems like best case scenario is that that is where it ends in Russia.

What do you all think? Yeah, by the way, that young man that was holding the F war sign that was attacked immediately was a solo picket. Law doesn't mean anything in Russia anymore, it's whatever Putin wants. And so if you're protesting Putin, yeah, of course he's gonna arrest you. he's an authoritarian leader and that's what we've been saying all along, some in the fake left pretended that he was angelic and that he, he, he, the Ukrainians had bad intent, but poor Putin was put upon, okay, doesn't appear that way, it looks like there's actually

real, wonderful Russian citizens fighting for peace and with incredible courage. And they obviously have a different story to tell. And then of course the right wing in America until today liked them because he was an authoritarian leader. And then they would see absurd things like, oh, we don't like that Canada's cracking down on trucker protests that's gone on weeks and weeks and terrorized the locals. Oh, Putin is cracking down on protesters who were showing credible courage. I mean, he's a wonderful authoritarian leader, right? Also, the cracking is slightly different in the two circumstances as well. As you, I mean, even in that footage, you saw hoses being used on protesters and things

like that, and we're gonna get to more violence. And imagine that you're one of those 1700 in the initial way arrested. How scared are you getting put into a Russian prison because you offended Vladimir Putin in the middle of a war? That is, man, there's bravery all around in this story and thank God for those Russians, those Those are worldwide heroes, Ben. It's one of the most like politically and socially difficult protest. That's true in the United States and it's true in basically any other country.

There's always going to be this sort of like nationalistic urge around the country whenever there's war. Like we've seen it here like with the Iraq war. And so to like like, and this is where this really demonstrates how much of a blunder. this is, really for Putin. Like Putin, I don't know what he was thinking, right? But he's clearly made an internal political mistake because, I mean, if you would have just kept troops in the separatist regions and donex and Luhansk, that would have been a different story. Because inside of Russia, there was actually a decent chunk of popular support for militarily defending

Luhansk and Donets. But this is a lot more than that. And now the public opinion seemingly has shifted extremely with inside of Russia and the fact that so many people are willing to go out and do this anti-war protest when to be honest, not only are they probably face, not only are they facing literally a lot of arrests from the government. They also probably were a little bit concerned about, you know, their neighbors or friends and things like that, you know, the typical like reality of being anti-war. And so it's really just brave on like a million different layers. And I mean, it's really good to see that people inside of Russia are demanding pulling out the troops. Yeah. Yeah, and in addition to regular people, and we're gonna show you

more footage in just a second, you have a number of very high profile celebrities in Russia coming out against the war, some of the biggest pop stars and late night hosts. I just saw earlier today, a Russian tennis player finished a match, walked off the court, walked up to the camera, and wrote no war on the lens of the camera, those are potentially dangerous things to do in the Russian context. So I'm glad to see that for multiple reasons, not only because maybe Hail Mary it might influence Putin in the near future, but also getting into some of the area that Ben was talking about there.

I wanna remind people that the leadership of Russia and the Russian people, not the same thing. Not to say that there aren't Russians that might support what's happening, but But do not simply assume that because I don't like what Russia, what Putin is doing, screw Russians. And we're seeing that. Some people throwing out wild ideas of, well, in addition to sanctions, let's kick out all the Russian international students that are in the U.S. What?

What are they military commanders? Honestly, if you're old enough to remember what it was like during the initial invasion of Iraq, there was a lot of worldwide hatred of the U.S. Well justified. But that was George Bush's war. I didn't okay that and so let's let's treat the Russian people with the same understanding let them tell you what it is that they stand for that's all I'm asking for so in those scenes you see a lot of young people but you also see

middle-aged women grandmothers I was looking through a lot of the pictures and to see those older grandmothers and grandfathers coming out there to say not on our watch, oh, how much do I love those folks? And I was going to say the same thing as John. I mean, to anyone who blanket says the Russians, what does that mean? The Russians who? Which Russians? It's hundreds of millions of people, which Russians, right? The ones that are forward or the ones against war? The ones in charge are the ones that are being oppressed by the ones that are in charge. It all that kind of commentary is always nonsensical. And And obviously no progressive would engage in that.

No, the Russian people are just like anyone else that's always been obvious except to fearmongers, et cetera. And so, and obviously the, both the journalists that have challenged Putin and now the citizens that have challenged Putin are among the bravest people in the world. And as I see their bravery, it made me remember what happened when there was protests in Washington. You guys remember this? Donald Trump went and hid in the bunker in the White House. He was so worried about tiny little protests outside the White House, hid in a bunker. Meanwhile, President Zelensky is in the street saying to the Russians, I'm here. Mayor Vitaly Klichko saying, I'm here to fight.

And the citizens arming themselves, meanwhile the Russian citizens saying, not on our watch, we don't want this war, we don't want this war, we're willing to risk arrest and our lives to fight against this war and in a peaceful direction. That's courage, and then you see blowhards and you see what kind of courage or lack thereof that they have. It's a stark contrast. And final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, there is, like, I mean, maybe this is me being way too hopeful, but if I believe, if I'm, if I'm remember

incorrectly recently there was elections and in like the Russian version of Congress they had like actually more leftist candidates picking up more seats and so maybe fingers crossed this is something that will precipitate much greater change in Russia over the near future and if if there is something good to come out of this horrific situation it will hopefully be the end of Putin's political career. But that might be a bit of a hope to say the least. Well, I'll end on that then because look with authoritarian leaders like Putin who changed a lot of laws in Russia to make it more authoritarian to have more control over the provinces and took away portions of democracy and who has stolen so much money from

the Russian people that he might literally be the richest man on earth. And by the way, some American bankers helped him to hide that money according to reports. So does that guy go out on his own accord? I haven't seen it yet. There's a lot of authoritarian leaders across the world. And I've never seen any of them voluntarily seat power. You know, whether they live in a theoretical democracy or not. So I don't know how that ends, but the answer is probably pretty poorly.

Yeah. All right. Well, we are burning through hours. So I think we should probably take our second break. But when we come back, we're gonna get to the potential future. the potential future of the SCOTUS as well as some insane like political platforms right wingers like Rick Scott will have that for you and more after this. All right, back on TYT, Chank, John and Ben with you guys. John, take it away.

I will do that. Joe Biden has finally announced his first pick to be nominated for the Supreme Court. Here's a little bit of that announcement. And it's my honor to introduce to the country, a daughter of former public school teachers, a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, a distinguished jurist, one of the nation's most on one of the nation's most prestigious courts. My nominee for the United States Supreme Court is Judge Katanji Jackson. I am truly humbled by the extraordinary honor of this nomination, and I am especially grateful

for the care that you have taken in discharging your constitutional duty in service of our democracy with all that is going on in the world today. Jackson had apparently long been on the short list for Joe Biden, and in previous segments on both this show and other shows on the network, we have gone through her history and qualifications. But I want to make sure that you at least understand some of what went into this choice. Jackson will be the first black female justice in the court's history and the first justice in decades with any significant experience representing criminal defendants.

She also served for two years as a federal public defender and she was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission at a time when that panel significantly rolled back federal sentencing guidelines for many drug offenses. She also, by the way, and I'll throw this out as a potential topic of discussion, was not the pick of everyone advising Joe Biden. So James Clyburn had been pushing for Judge Michelle Childs, Joe Manchin apparently had felt the same, but James Clyburn does say, I want to thank the president for not just keeping the promise to nominate a black woman to the court, he said, but for doing it in a way that

makes all of us proud. So at least putting it out there that there is no, you know, hard feelings or anything. But the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party had wanted Joe Biden to go in a different direction. Yeah, so there's a couple of things here that are really good news. So first of all, credit where credit is due, Joe Biden has been pretty terrific on the judicial picks. Not just Judge, I almost called her justice already, let's hope so. Judge Jackson, but a lot of his lower level picks in the appellate courts, district courts, et cetera, have also broken the mold and have not been as pro-corporate as previous administrations,

including Democratic administrations, which emphasized business-friendly judges. Biden has not done that. It's gone under the radar, and you know how tough we are on Biden. So when I tell you, he really did it, he really did do it. A lot of credit there. And now this appears to be a terrific pick. So she has no corporate law experience, which is great. Are you allowed to do that?

I know. It just feels like, wait, can you put someone on the Supreme Court that hasn't pledged loyalty to the Chamber of Commerce? And he just did it. He at least nominated her. And she was a public defender. I mean, it's unheard of. It shouldn't be unheard of. But a public defender on the Supreme Court, that's going to be amazing.

And then, of course, conservatives will attack her for being on the sentencing commission. I guarantee you that it's going to be the number one line of attack. She let out the criminals. Can you believe? Now, that was a long time ago. The reforms at that time were fantastic and sorely needed. But it doesn't matter. They'll pretend that it has something to do with the crime that's happening today, right?

And that'll be a disingenuous line of attack that is incoming in three, two, one, right? Now, but I want to go back to the other thing that Biden deserves credit for here, which was, it would have been easy to give in to the conservative Republicans and Democrats that wanted him to pick childs. The Republicans basically said, if you pick childs, we're just going to let her on the court, Okay, Lindsey Graham and others were signaling that very strongly, right? Because she was more pro-corporate. She was an employment lawyer on behalf of corporations, and I can get into the depths.

But we don't have to, so because she wasn't the pick. But Republicans were saying, you better pick this one. And Joe Biden, on other occasions, goes in that direction. But not just the Republicans. Clyburn is a conservative Democrat. He happens to be African American. It doesn't matter. He's very pro-corporate, and he's the one that helped Biden win in South Carolina.

And Biden made the pledge to pick a black woman for the Supreme Court in South Carolina when he was in trouble and needed to win that state. So defying Clyburn to say, no, I'm not going to pick the most business-friendly pick that's going to make your donors happy, James Clyburn. I'm going to pick the better pick. Hey, there's some courage there from Joe Biden. So well-earned credit. But now let's make sure that Kintanji Brown Jackson gets on the court, because this is as good a pick seemingly based on the information that we have now as we've seen in a long time. Yeah, this is a huge sigh of relief. This is a huge sigh of relief because I was I was honestly terrified, right? There's been a lot of really terrible Supreme Court picks, even like, okay, like, even Merrick Garland that like Obama put up, right? That was already a compromise. And he did.

didn't even get his seat. And so I was a little bit terrified of Joe Biden putting up a sort of compromise candidate that's very business friendly. I mean like a public defender, like public defenders work so hard and they have to like they have to represent like whoever they're representing, which means that they at least to some degree have to like try to connect to people who are just like average people who need a public defender. And so somebody with that experience being on the Supreme Court, obviously they're only going to be one person out of on the Supreme Court. So they're not necessarily even going to be the deciding vote on anything right now with the conservative Supreme Court that we have. But it really is, was just a huge

sigh of relief because I'm pretty critical when it comes to like things like Supreme Court picks and Joe Biden. I'm not really friendly to Joe Biden. And this was deeply, deeply surprising to me that like Joe Biden picked somebody that didn't have something, obviously, obviously horrible in their background. Yeah, yeah, and you're right, and of course it remains a conservative super majority, of course, but we have to bear in mind, and remember like in the lead of the elections we're warning you like, hey, Supreme Court's really important, think about it, and then we lost, and then Trump put a whole bunch of gargoyles on the Supreme Court.

Well, it is going to take a very long time to win it back, so we need all of the wins that we can get along the way. And we generally, we try to flatten down judges' ideology, but of course, some judges can be relatively more progressive on one issue rather than another. I mean, there have been, like, as Jenk was pointing out, like she specifically in areas of corporations, seems good in comparison to some of the others on the court that might be progressive in some areas, but not necessarily that area. We're going to be probably for the rest of our time broadcasting here trying to get the court back to where it needs to be. And so these little victories along the way are incredibly important in getting to that.

So I was just going to say that the fact that she has a massive amount of experience and more time spent as a judge than I think any two others on the court, certainly the more recent ones. That does not mean that they are not going to try to make a massive spectacle out of this. get incredibly ugly, it already has been. Look at what people on Fox News have been saying about Biden's pledge to nominate a black woman, let alone the individuals. It is going to get real dirty, so everyone needs to prepare for that. Yeah, there was just a brief moment, and this happens a lot on Fox News first breaks, they'll accidentally have somebody on air who'll have an honest reaction. So they had their legal expert on and they had Jonathan

Curley on as the announcement happened and they come back and they're like, boy, they, Both of them were like, she is stunningly well qualified, right? This is a really good pick. You cannot question her resume and her credentials, et cetera. Then watch Fox News question her credentials and all of that in the ensuing weeks. But even they had a brief moment of sanity for a second there as this was happening live. Now, look, talking about her credentials, she was born to two public school teachers. her dad then became a lawyer and she said that's what inspired her and he she

remembers doing her coloring books when she was in preschool as her dad was studying in law school and they sat at the same table and and it's a really cute story he's got a lot of interesting stories one of her uncles went on to get arrested for for dealing drugs very serious crime and and got a hefty sentence I think it was a life sentence. So on the other hand, another one of her uncles became the police chief of Miami. So she has seen a lot in her family and in her and in her life. And then she went on to get into Harvard.

Remember, she had no connections. Like in the beginning, her parents are just high school teachers, okay, or public school teachers. And so she got into Harvard anyway and then she got into Harvard law and then she became the editor of the Harvard Law review. That basically means you're the top student at Harvard. And that's not an anesthesat, and she interned for for Breyer and all those things that are amazing. And then to me though, the most telling thing was Lindsey Graham was furious. And he said, oh, I guess the radical left has won. And I was like, oh, okay, good.

Okay, it's not radical left. But if he's saying radical left, then she's a good pick, okay? So that's your bellwether right there. And I'm gonna double down on what John said. Look, Merrick Garland was kind of a very business friendly judge to begin with that Obama had picked. And the Republicans had blocked him. And I thought that was such a terrible thing to do that there was an argument to be made that you know, you hold Merrick Garland and you nominate him again just to fight back, right?

No, I'd much rather have Judge Jackson. I'd be glad he'd be Garland's now attorney general, so good enough on fighting back. And as we've seen as Attorney General, he's been pretty soft and weak. So let's go Judge Jackson. Final thoughts, Ben. There's kind of one thing like, okay, this is the one thing that Obama didn't do with Merrick Garland, that I just like Joe Biden, if you're watching, if you're listening, right? And they won't. And if the Republicans are trying to play hardball and they really try to run the clock for two years, I wouldn't put it past them.

There is a nuclear option that Joe Biden has available. And that is literally just showing up at the Senate when they're at a fake recess where they show up and they say, oh, do we have a quorum? They don't ask for a quorum and then they just leave, right? Because when the Senate is officially at recess, you can actually, the president could just put people on the Supreme Court. So if the Republicans really want to hold this off, there's always the option to just show up to the empty Senate chamber with one person, say, hey, can we do a quorum? Oh, there's no quorum. Cool. Guess who's the new Supreme Court justice? obviously it would have to get like reaffirmed after that. But after that, it would be a lot more difficult to take somebody off the Supreme Court seat than to, you know, then to refuse to put

them on for two years. So. Yeah. Thankfully, it shouldn't be necessary. I mean, they have all the votes they need. It's impossible to conceive of like one or two or Democratic senators deciding to single-handedly blow this thing up. It's impossible. Well, I'll tell you what, man. No, if a Democratic Senator opposes her, there will be hell to pay. I smell broomstone already, Jank. Yes. I think we're living in it. Anyway, with that, we are running low on time.

Why don't we jump into this last topic? I have a feeling Jake is going to have thoughts about it, actually. After months of prematurely defending not only the Russian buildup outside of Ukraine, but trying to persuade his millions of viewers to not care about what happens in Ukraine. To question why it is that they might be pre-isposed to think that their interests might not align with Vladimir Putin. Tucker Carlson is now in the wake of the full-on invasion, sort of admitting that Putin might be doing something bad. Take a look. What's happening in Ukraine, whatever it's scale, and it's not totally clear right now, but whatever it is, it's a tragedy because war always is a tragedy.

And the closer you get to it, the more horrifying it seems. It's the ugliest thing that men do ever. Vladimir Putin started this war. So whatever the context of the decision that he made, he did it. He fired the first shots. He is to blame for what we're seeing tonight in Ukraine. Okay, well, assuming that's all we watch, he seems like a responsible broadcaster who understands the stakes,

understands how to, you know, assign blame. But wait, actually, it almost seems as if there have been a few times few times in recent history where he sort of seemed to be on the wrong side of this. Thankfully, some of those moments have been summed up in a great montage by a user on Twitter, so let's take a look at that. Why would we take Ukraine's side? Why won't we on Russia's side? I don't, I'm totally confused. So much, has Putin ever called me a racist?

Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? As he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? I should say for the record, I'm totally opposed to these sanctions, and I don't think that we should be war with Russia. And I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine. That is my view. But Ukraine and Russia. And I'm serious. And why don't tell you why? And why shouldn't I root for Russia, which I am? Because those of us who are watching, no one on this show is rooting for potent, or rooting for the Ukrainians for that matter, always rooting for peace, for real. So like the ultimate, like, who is to say who is good

and who is bad? That is the best case scenario for Tucker Carlson. He also enthusiastically shrieked it people multiple times that he is in fact taking Russia's side against Ukraine. So perhaps a little bit of backpedal right now, people are really horrified at what they're seeing, but I would not assume that that's gonna last. Once things settle down, everything sort of becomes normalized, people get used to everything. I think he is going to enthusiastically resume the same sort of insane talking points that we had in the weeks leading up to the invasion. Well, so why the turnaround?

Well, Tucker Carlson basically A-B test his audience. What that means is he puts his finger to the wind and he's like, which way they're going? Oh, they don't like black people, okay, we're gonna focus on that. Immigrants, we're gonna focus a lot on that. Let me call them dirty, see if people get mad or not. Their immigrants are dirty. Well, no, they didn't get mad, they really liked it. Okay, I'm gonna do that again, right?

And you see them doing it on air, it's amazing. And then that's why they'll sometimes it'll be a drastic change. Because he's now, he was testing A, now he's testing B. And so why does he make those changes? Well, the whole stick about white authoritarian leaders in Europe was playing really well. Victor Orban and Hungary and Vladimir Putin and Russia. And they're so strong and they're not woke, you know, and out of that nonsense, okay? And you know, Vladimir Putin never questioned, you know, anything about race.

I mean, so he's good. She, I wonder why I mentioned race in the middle of this. People say, you know, I put out the tweet, we talked about it on yesterday's show and mentioning about how the conservatives are supporting him, not just because he's an authoritarian leader, but because he's a white authoritarian leader and conservatives pretend to be outraged, as if, but I didn't mention race, Tucker Cross mentioned race. I'm pointing out that Tucker Cross and mentioned race. And he made a reference to Asians as well in that spiel, he's like, Putin never ate dogs.

Never ate dogs, bringing in Asian stereotypes, like horrible ones out of nowhere, right? Because he's doing a dog whistle and well, literally on that one, and his audience before was eating it up. But today, Newsmax put out a statement questioning his loyalty to America. Now that's a right wing organization going further right than him. And now I think it was people see brave Ukrainians fighting back against Russia and they see the Klitschkos who were heavyweight champions now, Vitaly is the mayor of Ukraine. And they see all of these heroic, I'm gonna keep it real, all of these heroic white men

fighting against the Russians, all of a sudden being Putin's best friend is not playing well for Tucker Carlson. So all of a sudden we've got a 180 degree, why the Ukrainians won't get it? Who cares about the Ukrainians? Who cares about them? The Russians, I'm on the side of the Russians. All of a sudden he's like, oh, the Ukrainians are also white. Ooh.

And now I could see them. It's not theoretical anymore. There's videos everywhere of their courage. And now you're gonna be on Putin's side. All of a sudden, so no, Putin, I never heard it. Who's Putin? Well, Tucker, the proof is in the Putin. We just showed you the videos.

And by the way, there was a lot more where that came from. We've shown you that in the past as well, including yesterday, Ben. Yeah, I mean, I think like let's be real, like let's be real. Okay, Tucker Carson would love to be Vladimir Putin, right? Vladimir Putin is this hyper-capitalist oligarch in a country that works for his other hyper-capitalist oligarch friends, right? Like, you know, he's homophobic, he's transphobic. What about that would Tucker Carlson not like?

And that I think really speaks to the reality about a lot of these right wingers where, you know, they are, they're torn between thinking America is the greatest country in the world and loving every war that we engage in, and also wanting to literally be this hyper-capitalist oligarch that can, you know, write policy and invade countries with, you know, one word, basically. And so like, yeah, I mean, of course, right, of course Tucker Carlson was talking about Putin in that way, right? And of course, you know, like if I had to guess, right, a lot of Tucker Carlson's friends and a lot of other sort of wealthy individuals in the United States probably sympathize with Putin from the perspective of being a fellow capitalist

and are really just like, you know, because they're running like in a lot of ways, a lot of American capitalists kind of run the same game. They're just a bit more subtle and they don't have quite the control over the government that Putin does, but that doesn't mean that they don't want that level of control here in the United States. Well, it's funny you mention that, Ben, because yesterday Tommy Tuberville, one of the dumbest men in Congress, Republican from Alabama, huge Trump fan, came out and said, oh yeah, this is what happens when communist Russia invades and we don't want that kind of socialism here in America. Okay, Russia hasn't been communist in a long time. I have to remind that because we have right-wing viewers, too.

They don't know anything. So you have to explain to them slowly what facts are. And Putin is the last man on earth who would be a socialist. Putin is Uber capitalist. Like I take all of the private property, okay? And all my oligarch friends who are all billionaires, as long as they agree with me, they take all of your property. And we keep it, we keep it to ourselves and only ourselves.

In a sense, he set up like a libertarian paradise there. How's that working out? The presidency is his private property, effectively. Anyway, that is way all the time that we have. Yes, so everybody check out Galaxy Brain. Ben, great to have you on. John, also you were on. And I don't go to news next, so I'll get some respect.

All right, I'm playing. Of course, everybody check out damage report. All right, when we come back, more conservatives for war, of course. And we'll also do some non-war stories. I mean, I hope we get to, but there was a hilarious, speaking of libertarians, a hilarious crypto suit. Somebody's NFT was stolen, and they're libertarian, and they don't know who to report it to. Okay, all right, we'll be back.

They want to make you drink Starbucks every day from now until forever. 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 yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon