The Young Turks - Oh F***-15 - April 3, 2026

Episode Date: April 4, 2026

U.S. F-15 struck down by Iran. One pilot has been rescued, and a rescue mission is underway for the other. Another U.S. plane downed in the Persian Gulf. Trump flip-flops on whether or not the U.S. will open the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military is obliterating Iranian civilian infrastructure. Trump officially requests a 1.5 trillion dollar military budget. Thanks to our episode's sponsors: Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/damage for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Use less data, get paid by switching to Noble Mobile: https://go.tyt.com/getnoble Hosts: John Iadarola, Yasmin Aliya Khan SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/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. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when West Jettings welcomes you on board.

Here's to West Jetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at Westjet.com slash 30 years. Let's go. Turks, it's the Friday show. I'm here, John Adirola, and Yaz as well. Yes, Manalia Khan. How's it going? Going great.

Happy to be on the first hour with John today. I'm glad to have you here. It feels like we're taking a whole lot of TDR and slathering it all over TYT, which will be a lot of fun. And we're going to talk about the news because there's a lot of news. Most of it coming out of Iran or bearing on what's going on. Iran because as I'm sure everyone watching this is already aware, the war has taken an even worse turn than it has in the first month. So that's certainly exciting slash tragic. And we'll be talking

about that as well as some of the announcements that have been made about what the budget priorities of Donald Trump or the Republicans are set to be for this year, which I think are absolutely disastrous, both substantively as well as politically. So we'll be talking about that. But before we jump into that, Yes, I just want to talk about something very briefly because before the show, we were talking about Project Hail Mary and the Martian and a bunch of space stuff. And I know the Artemis 2 mission just went off a couple of days ago. I don't know if you, I mean, I am assuming you were paying attention to that, considering your familial connections to NASA. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was really cool. We watched the launch. It was very exciting. Yeah, my husband works there. And so he did he did work on the Artemis launch. I don't know. It was so cool, like knowing that he like, knowing that he like, helped get something into space, however big or small. But it's so cool and it was very exciting. And yeah, the movie Project Hail Mary came out around the same time. And so all of that was very exciting.

Yeah, the timing was great. It was great timing. Every once in a while NASA knows how to like make a good moment. That's true. Both Yaz and I recently watched not only Project Hail Mary, but also the Martian. So we're like perfectly primed for scientists working together to do something great. The dark turn that I will now make in this anecdote is the reason I'm talking about this is I saw earlier today that like 48 hours after the whole country,

the whole world's like, yeah, American space superiority, they announced that they want to cut like $5 billion out of the NASA budget for 2027. Yeah, it's constantly just like a looming threat here in Houston. And really like especially the part of Houston where I live, a lot of people earn their living through NASA in some way, shape or form from like the space industry that's down here and all the technology that comes out of that. And it's scary because these are some people who their whole lives, they wanted to work at NASA. But NASA is constantly fighting against getting defunded by the government, you know, getting

deprioritized. And it's not just space. It's not like the people at NASA are just like trying to go to space and neglecting everything here on Earth because that's an argument here. The science is really remarkable that comes out of NASA. These are like the top scientists and engineers who work there, everybody and mathematicians, all kinds of people. And it's constantly being undervalued and defunded.

And then what happens is the industry becomes privatized. And you have these billionaires who say, you know what? I'll save NASA. I'll take us to the moon. I'll do all these things. And that's how you get people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the other guy, what's his name, the virgin guy who are just in there. And so then the NASA employees, they do now have to work with the SpaceX teams and the

blue origin teams and things like that. So the goals get a little bit scattered and disoriented, but you know. Yeah. And you'd almost think that that shift from public funding for space travel to private funding, that would look really bad like if, you know, if you'd imagine like what if those private billionaires had given a bunch of money to the president and his party? Then it would look really suspicious that you're doing that. But anyway, and the last thing I want to say about this is the amount of money that's talking about being cut is to my mind as an on expert about like two Artemis missions worth of money. which seems like a lot, but it's also like 72 hours of the Iran war. So like they're going to hamstring our ability to set up a moon colony, which Trump himself has been saying we have to do so that we can pay for a couple of days of Pete Hegsith,

getting to blow up ships or whatever in the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. That's their priorities. Justice of it all is infuriating. Like the more you think about like all the money that is being sent over to Iran. And I know we have like a full hour of Iran talk today. But the money that is being spent over there. And this is coming from a guy who said America first.

That was his entire campaign promise was America first. And I was taking all of our money to the point that he's going to defund NASA. And defunding NASA is very unpopular for the government to do. The American people love NASA, right? Like people love the idea of NASA and what it represents. And like it's so sad to see that this happens continuously. And for what reason? Like it's all so pointless.

And we're gonna talk about how pointless. it is, I'm sure, on the show. Yeah, it's why I prefer pop culture to reality, because in movies like The Martian and in Project Hail Mary, none of that would have been possible if they had leaders like we are burdened with, unfortunately, in the real world. Yeah, it's funny because like even in the Martian, you see like the director of NASA. And I was like, is that supposed to be that other guy? Like, like, whenever you see the people as are represented and portrayed in the movies

versus like the real life act people, you're just like, oh God, like they really. think very highly of these people and they're not that good. They're just not, they're better in the movies. It's almost always the case. Okay, well, with that said, we do have a lot to talk about. A lot is going on in Iran. So yes, if you're okay with it, we're going to jump into the news. Absolutely. Okay, let's do it. Look, I love my yard and I wanted to look good, just like the next guy, but I absolutely hate dealing with the tools, especially the hose. You know what I'm talking about. I drag it out, it immediately kinks, gets tangled in the bushes, and a year or so, it's got a leak. Happens every time.

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Just text TYT to 64,000. That's TYT to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text TYT to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. Tragically, a U.S. fighter jet was indeed shot down over Iran. A second plane has also gone down, but this one was apparently shot down by offensive fire from Iran, and that is the first airborne casualty they're saying of this conflict. Of course, some of the other planes that have been marked as damaged by the US military when you see the photos,

those are, they're totaled, they're escanned. They're not going to be flying anymore. But this one is the first where it wasn't friendly fire and they're actually copying to the fact that it was shot down, despite the fact that we keep being told by our leaders who would never lie to us that all of the Iranian missile launchers have been destroyed for literally weeks. Anyway, Iranian state media posted on social media because this war is terminally online. They posted footage of the downed jet. They claimed that it was an F-35, which is one of the more recent and more advanced planes in the U.S. military. It was in fact an F-15, which is significantly older. It's not a stealth jet or anything like that. But it was indeed

shot down. We don't know exactly where the attack occurred. But if you want to jump to this B-roll, people inside of Iran have been tracking where the sort of, you can see flying. There's C-130 and a couple of rescue helicopters, which thankfully they were not shot down. That was in central Iran, supposedly Kuzistan province, which is in central Iran, is where that was going on. Now, the good news is that one of the two members of the crew of the plane that was shot down has actually been recovered, which is great news. The issue is that at least as of right now, and I was really hoping that we would get some sort of update by the time the show went live, the second member of the crew has not been recovered. And although there's not been a lot of information

released by our government about exactly what happened, it seems as though the plane might have been shot down as much as 15 hours ago, which means that if you did go down, and you are trying to find somewhere to hide, it's an increasingly long amount of time that you're having to hide. What I have to imagine is an absolutely massive on-the-ground manhunt by the Iranians who would like nothing more than to capture what I believe is supposed to be the electronics warfare officer from the plane. A news anchor for a local affiliate associated with state media in Iran said this, if you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police and military forces, you will receive a valuable reward and bonus, which I imagine, yes, they probably

will. You can see here more photos that have been put out, including of the ejection chair, the ejector seat, which is grounded at that point. And so we're also in the weird position where more information is now being released as by the Iranians about all of this as it develops than the United States military, which has not been forthcoming or honest about almost any aspect of this war. I don't know why we would assume they would be about this disaster. And it's a disaster both objectively, but also bear in mind, I made like a vague allusion to this. Pete Hanks has just in the past couple of days was bragging about how the fact that there is so little ability of Iran to strike back against our planes that some of these slow bombers that previously had not been able to

operate over the skies of Iran. Now we can just cruise around over Tehran if we want. It's so safe. And then within a couple of days, of course, a jet is shot down. So this looks really bad for the Trump regime. It looks really bad for the war effort. We're hoping that the other member of the crew is recovered. But what do you make of this? Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that the Iranians have spoken to us, the American people,

more directly than our own government has. And I say that because, of course, you know, Pete Heggseth is always doing his weird addresses that we for some reason have access to. Trump is giving his own addresses. I didn't even watch his address because why? Like, what is the point? He just gets up there and he lies. He doesn't say anything real.

He doesn't say anything that you can actually bank on or, you know, expect to see happen. He says one thing. He says the exact opposite thing the very next day. This has been happening consistently since he started all of this in Iran. And the Iranian government is putting stuff out. And again, like just the fact that, you know, even the stuff that's coming out of Iran feels like could be a little bit more trustworthy. That's very sad. Because this is a government that we're at war with right now. And we're looking at what they're showing us. And we're like, okay, well, maybe that is

what's happening over there. I'm not saying that that's the best way to approach the situation, but that's what we have. When our own government doesn't even have the respect to tell the American people, what is going on, why we're over there, what are the goals? Trump keeps talking about these goals in Iran that he has to hit that the Americans are, we're hitting all of our goals, hitting all of our targets. What are the goals? What are the targets? What are we doing? One minute, he says the war is done and we've done everything that we went over there to do. Next day, he's talking about sending in ground troops. Next thing, he's talking about sending an entire carrier over to the Strait of Hormuz. And what's happening right now, something interesting,

if that's even the right word for it, is that people who are already active within the military are kind of trying to find ways out of their military service right now. And there are ways for them to get out of military service. But so many of them now are reporting that they do not want to go to Iran. They don't know what they're fighting for. They don't know why they're being removed from their families. And they don't want to go over there and bomb schools full of children. They don't want to kill people when they don't even know what they're fighting for.

You know, so much of military service is dependent on that that will. that inner strength that comes, the Iranian people have something to fight for. The Americans do not right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like we've fought a lot as really stupid wars, even just in my lifetime. But they at least tried to put together an interesting pitch for it. Like a narrative.

Yeah, like the idea that it's, yeah, we'll invade Iraq because something, something, 9-11. It didn't actually make sense if you really think about it. But like, they tried to sell that. What the hell? What the hell are you risking your life? life for in Iran. And when you can't trust them at all. And again, it's not like our past leaders, we're always super forthcoming and honest about about war. Again, they lied about the weapons of mass

destruction in Iraq. We've been lied to before by our leadership. But generally, it was like the big lie. And then mostly you could trust the smaller scale stuff that they said. You can't trust a single goddamn thing that Donald Trump, any of them, Pete Hagsith, say about this. Because the combination of the fact that they don't respect the American people, they don't believe that they should be responsive to what the American people think. If they did, they never would have launched into this war considering that they got into office specifically running against this sort of foreign pointless, wasteful adventures. And also thinking that like, oh, this is three dimensional chess. You know, like we put out something about how we're going to be diplomatic or whatever. And then we bomb them or whatever, which is why I believe that all of the BS we've been hearing with like leaks coming from inside the White House, Donald Trump's.

address, oh, two to three more weeks and we're out. I think all of that is a total incomplete lie. And you see all of these people who live near bases all across America talking about huge shipments of tanks going out and stuff like that. And, you know, the leaks come out, Donald Trump's speech comes out. Have you heard any updates about soldiers being taken out of the Middle East? Like, oh yeah, that whole thing about like, you know, the 2000 Marines. That ship is back on its way to San Diego. I haven't heard anything like that. And I think the actions speak infinitely louder than the words of some of the biggest liars in American history. And so I believe, and honestly, if it happens that this other, you know, a crewman from the F-15 ends up having died,

or is taken prisoner or whatever, they're going to use it as a justification for an invasion. That's my belief, at least. For now, most of the information, as I said, we're getting out of Iran, not just information, but also non-stop trolling. The speaker of Iran's parliament tweeted this. After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no strategy war they started has now been downgraded from regime change to, hey, can anyone find our pilots, please? Wow, what incredible progress, absolute genius is. So as tweets go, that's a somewhat clever one, although I have to say, and I think probably a lot of people will agree, I wish we didn't live in a world in which that sort of thing happens.

I don't need wars to be persecuted in this particular way. Or the fun that some of the country specific Iranian embassies are having, like with this where the Iranian embassy in South Africa is posting about how the regime change has happened as they cross off all of the generals being fired by Pete Hegesith. And it's not concerning at all that a lackey and a fascist like Pete Hegesith is clearing out the top leadership of the military in the midst of a war. It's pretty easy, I think he has to come up with explanations as to why he might be going against them. I think they're telling him things he doesn't want to hear. including possibly saying no to orders that might indeed be illegal. And so that's my concern.

I mentioned also earlier and then I'll get more thoughts from you that there was a second plane that went down. This was a second combat plane crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday. The pilot has already been rescued, thankfully. This was an A10 Wartog attack plane that went down near the Strait of Ramos about the same time that an Air Force F-15E, the one that we were talking about earlier, went down. And I had not heard. heard much about A10s being used in the fighting. That is a very low to the ground, ground attack aircraft, usually used against mostly like enemy vehicles and things like that. It's not a bomber. It's not like an F-15 or an F-35 or an F-22 or anything like that. So I don't know if

they're practicing with them in advance of taking out Iranian tanks. I don't know. But what do you think? Yeah, I mean, let's not forget that a lot of these weapons manufacturers, including like, for example, Lockheed Martin, donated a lot of money to this administration. And they are making bank off of everything that is going on right now between the United States and Israel and Iran and whoever else is involved because it's getting very difficult to keep track of all that right now.

It's also embarrassing for this country that we are getting trolled by people from Iran with all these memes and things like that. And usually, you know, like the Americans, like we take a lot of pride in like our snark, but we don't like it when it's, directed back this way at us and when they're good at it, right? Like it's hard to deny. But yeah, more seriously, like the fact that our own military is being just diminished the

way that it is by this administration, just the mere fact that even before this war, Trump was constantly just firing people and putting different people in their positions. And every time he put someone in their position, they're less experienced, they're less good at the job, but they're more loyal to him and more likely to just say yes to him. Right? Because how do you get rid, how do you lose a job in the Trump administration? You just tell him no and he's going to get rid of you. Right? It's only a matter of time before any of that happens. And so what happens now? This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean a hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tell us online security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season. or any season.

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and no events to 12-year-old boys, but they are the worst, you know, and he sounds like one of them. You know, and most of them grow out of it, though, right? Pete Heggsett, that's just who he is forever, it would seem. And, you know, with somebody like Donald Trump, he has his own motives and his own goals for being over there, all these things that he's doing. I might be getting a little bit ahead of myself in the stories that we're going to be covering on the show later. But, you know, there is no way out of this for him, right?

It's either he is humiliated by pulling out of everything, or, you know, he just keeps going and throwing more money, more weapons and more people into the situation that is, you know, becoming more and more deadly, more and more expensive as we go. And not just for the Americans, really for the entire world, because countries around the world are now starting to suffer as a result of everything going on right now in the straight and between the United States, Israel, and Iran. For example, you know, places like Pakistan even, right? like they're moving from a five day work week to a four day work week, encouraging people to

start working from home because there's no more gas or there's no oil to go around. So this is affecting the entire planet and all of this for Donald Trump. And if it's about, you know, doing all this stuff or he's humiliated, then whatever. Like, let him be humiliated. I don't care. Exactly. Yeah. And what sucks is, you know, we can't expect anymore from like Donald Trump and Pete Heggson.

But in theory, there's there's another branch of going. government that's supposed to be weighing in on this sort of stuff. And they just have no thoughts whatsoever. Totally fine. The war crimes, the waste of money. Who cares? It's not worth talking about. Yeah.

Anyway, they're too busy covering up the Epstein files. Okay, so we're gonna take our first break of the hour when we come back. We do in fact have more of what's been going on over in Iran, so don't go anywhere. We'll be back. I want to go to space. Nerd. These social breaks are too short these days. I'm gonna try to jump into this and later I am going to Google what Alex Jones was

talking about when he said he wanted to go to space because I'm super curious. Ecclectic says it's John and yes. It's like we've got a special bonus episode of the damage report for Easter. It is. Ian says, who could have guessed a draft Dodger was a horrible wartime commander. IDK says that's sad. We've had as much military regime change from Hegsteth as Iran has had, winning on both sides, America. And primaries are important. Says the X's on those generals was the scariest thing I've seen yet. I'm guessing those were the ones with morals. Yeah, I mean, thankfully it's not X's because they've been killed or anything. But yeah, like they're not being taken out because they don't know what they're

doing. Like Merritt has nothing to do with anything in the military these days. Let's be very clear about that. And I imagine he's already weeded out the women and people of color. Like these are just people who are saying no or telling him like, you know, if we invade via the ground, we're going to lose X number of soldiers. And that reflects poorly in P-Hexas. So they get rid of them, bring up someone else who sure they don't know what they're doing and them being in charge will enact a cost in bodies and in money, but they don't like to be told no, as, as Yaz was saying. Okay, let's see. AngryCom says the party crowd on tonight, John, Yaz, Jordan, and Brett, yes, Jordan and Brett will be taking over for the second hour of the show. Oh my God, we are

already out of time. That is way too fast. Okay, well, stick around. More news to come on the other side of this. Welcome back, one and all. It's John. Yes is here. Jank and Anna are out for today. But they'll be back soon. Don't worry about that. And with that, why don't we jump back into what's going on in this war? After spending at least the last week, insisting against all reason and rationality that the straight of Hormuz is an R problem? Why would the U.S. do anything about that?

That's for like the UK and Spain to take care of. All of a sudden today, Donald Trump is talking about it as if, no, in fact, it actually might be something that we should do something about. So before we get to what he said earlier today, let's just. just be clear by running back over the record of how many times he has declared that it's not his problem. Take a look. The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormostrate and won't be taking any in the future. We don't need it. We haven't needed it and we don't need it. We've beaten and completely decimated Iran. They are decimated, both militarily and economically and every other

way and the countries of the world that do receive oil through the hormone strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. I don't like that he talks about the straight of Hormuz the way best case scenario, he talks about the way he treats American flags and worst case scenario, women who aren't interested in him. But anyway, it is our problem since, you know, we started the goddamn war. One would think we are the ones who should secure the straight of Hormuz. Also, like if you believe or if he believes what he says about we don't get oil through the state of Hormuz,

like the countries of the world that get oil through the state of Hormuz are the countries of the world. Because that's how the global oil market works. You dumbass, you are gargantuan moron. He either knows nothing about how the international global oil market works, or he's hoping that you don't. He's hoping you're a stupid peasant that he can continue to play in con. But anyway, he also said at one point, maybe we don't even need the UK, don't even need Spain or France. It'll just solve itself. Take a look. So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves.

I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us, as we asked. Go to the straight and just take it, protect it. Use it for yourselves.

Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will only, open up naturally. It'll just open up naturally. They're gonna want to be able to sell oil because that's all they have to try and rebuild. It will resume the flowing and the gas prices will rapidly come back down. Again, if we're not getting oil from them and only like the UK is or Madagascar or whatever, why are we paying $115 more per gallon than we were before the war? That's not a rhetorical question, moron. I want an answer to it. I want you to learn something.

Google oil and how it works. But anyway, uh, it and the idea that after all of this, Iran's just going to be totally cool with the straight and they're not going to ever exert any sort of pressure over it when they want something is ridiculous. But don't worry, all of that's being set aside. That was like three days ago. He's not going to be held to something he said three days ago. Now he's saying this. With a little more time we can easily open the Hormoo straight, take the oil and make a fortune. It would be a gusher for the world. Come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. And at the same time, I don't know what that means, but also I think I do. And I don't like it. This is a news show. I don't like, do you know Trump, how uncomfortable you're making Ben Shapiro with your imagery? Don't do that to him. So anyway, yeah, no, we could just take it easily.

I mean, I know we haven't tried, even though they're decimated. We're not trying to secure it, even though it's easy for the UK to do it. weird the disconnect between those two statements, but we can easily do it. And then we take the oil. What do you mean? You're just going to try to jack every ship that comes through? That's not how it works. If you want to take their oil, you're talking about invading and conquering Iran. Again, that's what he's hinting at after saying that the war would be done in just a couple of weeks. That's how we would make a fortune. Anyway, Yaz, what is what is the gusher thing about? I hate the gusher thing.

I don't love the way he speaks about oil. I wish that he would like just use different language because as a woman, it just makes me very uncomfortable the way he speaks sometimes. But like I don't know what he thinks, like how he thinks he's fooling the American people, right? And maybe he is, right? Maybe the people who are so loyal to him and who have been following him and voting for him in the last three elections, maybe those people are like, oh, I guess we've won. I guess we've decimated Iran.

And for some reason, that's supposed to be a good thing, even though my own president can't exactly tell me why or how, right? Just that I guess they were a nuclear threat. And I guess we need all their oil. And we can just take oil. The same way we just took all the oil from Venezuela, even though the oil in Venezuela, was really our oil, even though it was in Venezuela, right? But it's also, John, it's not just about how the global markets work, right?

It's also how geography works. And he acts as though, no one has ever seen a map boat. He acts as though he has never seen a map before. We don't just get oil from places like Venezuela or even from our own fracking. The United States is not energy independent because of fracking and things like that. There's a reason why the United States is so allied with and beholden to Israel. There's a reason why we have so many military bases in the Middle East. There's a reason why there's always constant instability in the Middle East and it is in large

part because the United States needs access to the oil that is in the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia and places like Iran, I'm sorry, in places in the Middle East, right? And places like Iran, they block, barricade the access to that. And like, there's just no other way around it. That just is the facts. That is just what's happening. And for him to say, like, I started this war. And I'm sorry that created inconveniences for all the rest of you, but you need to figure

this out now. It's unbelievable. And if I was in another country, I would be livid right now. I live in this country and I'm livid because all of my. money is going to this. But even John, like, let's say he pulls out of everything right now. And again, I don't love the imagery of any of this, but let's say he pulls out of Iran right now. And let's say that is what happens, right? At the end of the day, we will have had, we will end up in the exact same place that we were when we started and everything will have cost so much

more money. It's just like the best case scenario is that we have sent billions of our own tax on all of this and have gained nothing for it. And that's looking like the most likely outcome unless we have another situation like Vietnam where they just keep throwing things into this quagmire that they know they can't win just because they can't say we lost. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with most of what you said. I regret some of it. But yeah, no, it's a great point.

And by the way, you mentioned Venezuela. Remember we took their oil. We, we took it. You've gotten your shipment of oil, right? Comes every week, depending on where you live. Mine comes on a Thursday. I just get one barrel of oil. And that's why it's so easy to drive to work. No, we didn't, we didn't get anything. We didn't get anything. And we're paying way more for gasoline than we were before. We're paying way more for fossil gas than we were before. We didn't get anything.

Presumably some rich A-holes got something. I guess people like Scott Besant and his buddies, those who eat caviar with him, they're doing well, I suppose. I didn't get that. Remember we took all the gold from have you gotten any gold? Did you get a necklace, a pinky ring? Nice, but no. I didn't get any old gold. In fact, I'm beginning to think, I don't think I'm gonna get any Iranian oil either. Weird, I don't think I'm gonna get any of those minerals from Ukraine.

As we rape and pillage the world, I'm not getting much. You know, that's the question is who did get the Venezuelan oil? Where are all these resources? Where are they going? Who is hanging on to them? Where is the Fort Knox that is, you know, Trump is building his ballroom. So there's a lot of great questions, fundamental questions that I don't think anyone can answer. You remember how Donald Trump was gonna take 10 billion?

for the Board of Peace. Let me ask you a question about that. Did he? I don't know. Does anyone know? Does Congress know? No, no. I don't know. But anyway, we do have other details on the straight of her moves, so I should probably move to those. We've got more insult to injury to Donald Trump from Iran when it comes to the straight of form moves. First of all, so he was telling all these other countries, you deal with it, whatever. We knocked this down, we created all this chaos, we started the fire, but you fix it. Well, some of them it looks like might have because one French and one Japanese container ship have made it through the state of the strait. France's was the first Western vessel to actually go through the straight since the war began and it wasn't fired on.

It kind of looks like they made some sort of deal. We don't know specifics. We don't know if it's the result of government diplomacy or negotiations by companies and their intermediaries like directly with Iran. But they're getting their ships through, which is interesting. We're not. We're not benefiting from that. We'll see maybe with the oil getting in the global oil market, it'll still help a little bit. I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that for right wing media, some at least the traditional Fox News, they want Trump to really step things up and escalate the war by taking direct control of the strait, which as we will describe will be quite consequential. But here is Brian Kilby. I said why Iran is surviving. This war is because of the strait. The Iranians think that is it. If they can hold the straight, they win. And we can't leave without opening up that straight. There's no scenario where we leave this operation the next two to three weeks. And we say,

let them open it up and can consider it successful. There's just no way. They're now getting millions of dollars in tolls to help them survive by from other countries that have to prove their worth and that they're not collaborating with us. in order to get through. We can allow that. Yeah, it's a bad situation. It's almost something that maybe Trump and Hegseth should have realized was inevitably going to happen. Oh, sorry, they were told that it was going to happen. In fact, Raisin Cain told them some of this stuff. They just didn't care. And so if we do what Lindsey Graham wants, what Mark Levin wants, what Brian Kilmead wants, we will at the very least land troops to try to take Karg Island, if not the Iranian mainland. And apparently during all this time where Trump is, I think, really pathetically and shallowly trying to pretend that that's not going to happen as if Iran then won't prepare. They are preparing. They're hardening their defenses on Karg Island, including boosting guided missile systems, laying mines along the coastline and booby trapping facilities.

That was one of the main things I was worried about a couple of weeks. Apparently they are doing that. They're also carving tunnels into many of the islands, which Iran is preparing to defend with missiles and other munitions. So if we land our troops, we should expect that we're going to lose a whole hell of a lot of them. And that's just Carg Island. And the deaths won't just be on Carg Island. Iran is saying that if we try to take the island, they're going to expand to target offshore oil platforms in the region, potentially hitting infrastructure like power plants and desalination facilities. And I know what you're thinking.

Wouldn't those be war crimes? And I would say, yes, whether they do it or whether we do it, it is in fact a war crime, so we should stop promising to do it. So anyway, we're going to get to a little bit more of what Donald Trump has been taking credit for. But yes, as I'm sure you're aware, Iran has a large domestic military, something like close to 200,000 members of the Revolutionary Guard, something like a million total members of their armed forces. And I have no doubt that ours is better equipped, better trained, all of that. But that's still a whole lot of people prepared, I think, to defend their homeland if we were to invade. What do you think?

Yeah, absolutely. And they're mobilizing even more people. They're they're enlisting more people to join the army. And as I said earlier on the show, and this is, it just is such an important point is that they have a reason to fight, right? They're the ones defending their homeland. We, the American military, the members of our military right now, don't know what they're fighting for. And whatever they understand to be fighting for is not good in. They're not defending anything. They're not defending democracy. They're not defending their home.

All of these things is just a completely made up thing that came out of the Trump administration and from Israel. And, you know, arguably even from past administrations who were continually peddling this idea that Iran was going to destroy us one day, eventually. And the other thing is, you know, Karg Island, they're focusing on Karg Island. And perhaps it is of some strategic benefit. But really, is it worth everything that it would cost? It's arguable that it is not, right? It's in, it's right there.

It's right before you hit the straight. It's an island in the Gulf. And it's, you know, the Iranians are already there. They're already fortifying it. The lives that it would cost to try and take this island. And then what would we get for it? They're not really sure. They're not really saying.

But then on top of that, even on the Iran mainland, it is a very, very treacherous terrain, right? There's mountains everywhere and these are not cute mountains. These are not like the mountains that they hiked over at the end of the sound of music. These are like craggly mountains. It's very dangerous and we know what happens whenever you send a foreign army into an unknown geography, something like that that's very treacherous. We've never won a war that way.

So it's just it's why don't we learn from our past mistakes? I have no idea. But at this point for Trump, it doesn't seem as though he even understands that he has the option to just stop what he's doing. And again, even if he did stop, it would have already cost us so much money and lives. If Donald Trump had to accompany the forces, if Pete Hexith did, they would learn their lesson real fast. They would not, there would be no ground invasion. Why would they do that? Well, exactly. That's why, why would we learn a lesson? Trump's never going to pay for it. By the way, you know who seems to understand how absolutely disastrous a ground invasion would

be for their soldiers? Israel, which is why they've already said that they will take part of will take part in none of this. And you might think, oh, well, you know, it's a tiny little country. How many soldiers could they possibly have in their army anyway? Including reserves, over 600,000. Yeah. And they will be sending zero when it happens. And they're required to do military service over there. Yeah, everyone's trained. Everyone knows, knows how to do it. But they just, it's just for show. It's just for fun. We have a military, but we don't like to use it. At least not for something like this, let's just use the Americans instead because they will. You know, they already have Trump. He's going to send all of his, all of my money over there, all of our weapons and all of our

people over there. And our people do not want to go. And they're protesting in the military. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Okay. Well, why don't we turn to some of what's gone on inside of Iran Reese? Oh, you think we should take the first break or the second break? I mean, no, we'll continue. Okay, yes, let's continue. Let's jump into this. What you're seeing right there is the bombardment and eventual destruction of the largest bridge in Iran. The strikes that you're witnessing there are devastating, not just to the infrastructure, but you are also witnessing at least eight people being killed when Donald Trump, I guess made good on his insane and likely illegal threat to start targeting the non-military

infrastructure of Iran. He said he would do it and now he's doing it. And he's bragging about it on true social saying the biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down. He's a poet with words, Trump is. Never to be used again, much more to follow. It is time for Iran to make a deal before it is too late, and there's nothing left of what still could become a great country.

And he goes on to say, our military, the greatest and most powerful by far, anywhere in the capital W world, hasn't even started destroying what's left in Iran. Bridge is next, then electric power plants. New regime leadership knows what has to be done

and has to be done fast. So targeting not just a bridge, but electric power plants. He's talked about destroying desalination plants and things like that. And he's just so hyped for the destruction. Oh, maybe he killed some civilians when he did that. And Benjamin Nanyahu wants to get in on it. He said, together with our American friends, he calls us friends. Isn't that nice?

We are continuing to crush the terrorist regime in Iran. We're eliminating commanders and bombing bridges and infrastructure. Yeah, the Ayatollah was probably on the bridge. That's probably why they blew it up. It had apparently just been constructed when we blew it up. And US official says that it was attacked because it was used by the Iranian armed forces to try and secretly move missiles and missile parts from Tehran to launch sites in Western Iran and for giving logistical support for Iranian military in Tehran. Yeah, I bet that's probably why we blew it up. There's probably no other way to get those missiles across now. And by the way, as we are now

want to do we did in the school that we bombed. And as Israel constantly does, it was a double-tap strike, which means we hit it, we then waited, we let rescue forces show up to try to help the survivors, and then we blew them up too. We killed the nurses and the EMTs and maybe a couple of doctors and some people who drive ambulances and things like that. We murdered them too, which is just awesome. And apparently at least 95 people were wounded in the strikes. And so, Yeah, that's us. Yes. We're the good guys.

We're heroes, I think, around the world. It feels great to be American on days like this. Yeah. You know, also when you were reading that statement from Benjamin Netanyahu, when he called us his friends and he was like, we're doing all kinds of great things. We, excuse me, we, where is the we? Who is doing what over where, you know? And it's so infuriating because like it feels so helpless.

This is such an unpopular war here in the United States. Nobody's supporting it. Congress has not said, yes, we're at war, right? It's still, what do they call it, a military operation or whatever they, you know, just technicality. Same thing like Iraq, you know, like this is all, I lived this entire scenario already once before, 25 years ago, because that's how old I am and you're even older than I am, John, you know. And it's everyone's aware. Just making sure. I'm just making sure, right? And, you know, but it's every, every, you would think again that we would learn. from our past mistakes, but even like the rhetoric that they're using is the exact same. And we're just like, oh, never heard that before. You know, most people have heard it before. And it should have triggered something in you when you heard it again now coming from this administration.

What else is interesting to me is the people who support the administration still. I don't think, how could you possibly know what you're even supporting when Trump says one thing? He says another thing the next day. And then somebody else from the administration is saying something completely different. Even if you support this administration, how do you know what it is that you're supporting? How do you keep all of these multiple stories on track in your brain? You know, like it's very confusing to me how all this is happening.

And then on top of that, this whole situation where now he's going to be sending our troops over to Iran, potentially. It seems likely that that is going to happen if it hasn't happened already. And this is again from the guy who was voted into office after he said, I'm not going to start any more wars. He spent the majority of the first year of his term, of his second term, bragging about how many wars he's ended all around the world. Right. And every time he would say it, it like the number got bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like six wars. And it was like nine or something like that. And we're all just like, did you? You know, is that actually what happened? And then whenever they didn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize, He was like, you know what, we're going to annex Canada.

We're going to take over in Greenland. We're going to attack all these fishermen in the Caribbean Sea. And then we're going to kill or we're going to capture the president in Venezuela and take over that country, steal all of their oil because it's our oil. Also over in Ecuador, we're going to do stuff. Also in Colombia, we're going to do stuff. And also in the Middle East, we're going to do all kinds of stuff over there. And then while all that is happening, Israel is still doing their genocide and bombardment in Gaza. They have expanded operations into Lebanon.

There's so much going on right now. We still don't have the Epstein file. So I guess, you know, there hasn't been as much of a push for that. So I guess they partially got what they wanted on that front. But all of this is happening. And the American people, the people who Trump said he was going to look out for and the people who voted for him believed that, they're still suffering, right? The gas is still expensive.

The grocery prices are not coming down. And what's even worse is that Trump himself, as well as other members of his administration, But Trump himself has said, I don't have time to worry about you. I have to do all this other stuff over here that I decided to do all on my own. Yeah. Okay. Well, we've given a pretty, I think, comprehensive rundown of what's been going on with our current defensive budget. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about how much bigger it's about to get. And then we can start to speculate about who will be invading and bombing then.

We'll be back in a few. Back everybody to the social break. Let's jump into some comments. Abby Normal says, USA needs to mind their own business and let other countries fight their own battles. I mean, right now, we're starting wars and then asking them to fight the battles for us. Okay, let's see. Salt of the Union says, John, you need to stay for hour two and engage in the hour long noble mobile commercial. Yes, I didn't actually see the infamous Jordan Brett show, but I have heard references to it before. Or another radical dragon says also if you take out Karg Island, Iran will have absolutely no incentive to reopen the straight for at least the next few years.

I mean, that's a pretty devastating point. Like, if you don't leave and leave them the capacity to process and then ship out the oil, why would they let any oil go to Karg Island? Why would they then let it leave? Why would they not blow up literally everything? It doesn't make any sense. And again, look, I guess the answer could be that we actually stop their capacity to fire missiles and drones. No serious person thinks that we can do that, though,

which seems like a big problem going forward. Uh, sort of word says, Anna once read, Fred Trump should have pulled out. I can't remember the rest of that. Gross. Would have saved us all a lot of trouble. Anyway, um, and Boomer Dragon Cat says, check Trump's project Gaza fund. Yeah, I would love to hear an accounting of whether he actually robbed us for those $10 billion. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back to One On All to the remains of the first hour of the Young Turks with me, John and Yaz. Definitely stick around after this for the second hour in which Brett Erlich and Jordan, you will be breaking down a whole lot more stories. Okay, with that, let's talk about our last topic. America and its people are hurting. We've got a bad economy, rising gas prices and difficulty for a lot of people paying for things as fundamental and simple as rent or housing, health care, food.

And the American people have been wildly clear in polls about how furious about all of this that they are. So that's the status quo as we look towards midterms later this year. And into that comes Donald Trump's budget priorities that he's now laying on the lapse of the Republicans. And that includes his desire to pass a $1.5 trillion defense budget alongside dramatic cuts to a wide variety of different domestic projects. The plan would boost the Pentagon by 42%. We already spent more on defense than basically all of the other countries in the world combined, and they want to raise it in one year by 42%. And then they also want Congress to approve another $350 billion for military weapons and an expansion of the defense industrial base.

And this accounting will never cease to amaze me. that we already spend a trillion dollars on our military that doesn't pay for wars we start. It also evidently doesn't pay for the weapons because they need to raise it to nearly two trillion dollars for weapons and whatever the hell defense industrial bases. I imagine that's literally just cutting checks for tens of billions of dollars to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman and all of that. I don't even know at this point. I don't know what you could possibly be spending the money on. Now obviously they're going to argue that they're paying. for some of this, but if you're going to be increasing the price of the defense budget,

you need to cut other things. They're proposing a 10% cut to non-defense spending. Like everything the federal government does that isn't defense, they're going to cut 10% out of it. That's, I mean, we could go through a list, that's, that's everything. That's NASA, that's the Parks Department, that's medical research, that's subsidies for anything that goes to you and your family, 10% cuts across the board so that we can bomb Iran more than we already have when we're already being told there are barely no identifiable military targets that we haven't hit. Now, they do have to get Congress to actually okay it and not just in any year, but in a midterm election, which they're already expected to do horribly, which might be difficult.

You have people like Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee saying, I'm very wary of voting for excessive spending in defense. He's not gone woke. He doesn't mean that the $1 trillion defense budget is too much, but he at least recognizes that raising it by 42% might be tough. And it might be like logistically tough because they're not even talking about trying to pass an honest budget. They're talking about using budget reconciliation. So basically saying, screw the Democrats. We're not even going to try to make this bipartisan. We're just going to pass it ourselves. But to do that, you would need effectively every single Republican to be on board. And again, it's an election year. And

And bear in mind, there are already ads being run about how much money is being wasted on this war. There's an ad targeting Republican Representative Derek Van Orden, $250,000 is going into that. The Wisconsin incumbent is, quote, going for another $200 billion to spend in Iran, according to the Marine Corps veteran that's going against him. This is the same guy who backed big cuts to VA care for vets. And you can expect, I think, yes, that there's going to be a lot of that sort of rhetoric. And I think the American people have been super clear that they want help. And even the right wingers, they said America first. And they're getting a diametrically opposed policy here. I imagine that's going to be a little bit difficult to sell to some Republicans.

What do you think? I don't know anymore because so many of Republicans, like I know that the MAGA base is shrinking right now. That's what they keep telling me. But the MAGA people in my life seem utterly unmoved or they seem as though this news has not just doesn't reach them. they're getting their news from, they're not hearing about these things, right? And if they, if they do hear about it, they're not bothered by it seemingly, or if they are, they're not talking to me about it. And, you know, honestly, that would be understandable. But, you know, like the defense industrial base, first of all, I thought we were the Department of War now.

I thought we didn't do defense anymore because we're like so macho now. We just have to fight people. But what does that even mean? You know, I mentioned earlier on the show that we've already got military bases all over the Middle East. And they do not love. like it, right? One of the big reasons why Iran is justified in wanting to, you know, not attack us, but to defend themselves against us is because we have been posing a threat to them. We keep saying that they have nukes and they're going to bomb us one day, but we have been surrounding them with military bases and not just them all over in the Middle East. A big part of the reason why 9-11 happened is because we put military bases in Saudi Arabia, even though the government said

We shouldn't do that, but we did anyway. And then we just left them there and that upset some people, one in particular in Saudi Arabia. And all of that matters, right? All of that context is important to know. It's not defending the actions and what happened. It's understanding why it happened and understanding that, you know, maybe we did do something at some point that upset some people over there. And also, as far as the budget goes, you know, they want to do reconciliation because they can't

even end this current partial shutdown that we're doing. dealing with right now. This is now the longest partial shutdown in our history. I think it's what, at 47 days now, something around there. And it's a new record that we've hit and they're nowhere near ending it, right? Like all half of Congress has gone home for Easter and they're like, oh, we'll figure it out when we get back. But there is no movement in any one way or another. Trump is saying to just end it. So we'll see what happens. But they can't even agree on DHS funding right now. So like this country, the way that Congress has been made completely impotent by this president, you can argue that the split was happening much before, but Trump really came in and split the

party in such a way that, you know, personally I haven't seen in my lifetime. I'm not that old again, but, you know, John is. John is. You said it this time, not me. But, you know, like, we haven't seen anything like this where it's so sycophantic and so loyalist to a president. We all read the book, the emperor has no clothes, but now we're living through it, right? Even as adults, like we read the book as children, now as adults we're living through it. And we're seeing these grown people, just like these old people who should have all the wisdom of the life that they've lived. And they're just like cowtowing to this man. And for what?

Like, what are they doing? These people are now up for reelection. We have a record-setting number of Republicans who are not seeking re-election after the midterms. they're either retiring or seeking positions outside of Congress or outside of their current positions, I should say. And it's because they can see that the American people do not support what they're doing. The American people do not support any of what this administration is doing. They're not over water, as Harry Enton would say, on any issue, right? On any issue, right?

They're not above water. They're down, down, like the Titanic. I can't match his energy, so I'm not going to try me. But yeah, like the American people do not support any of this. And we're getting frustrated. We're getting desperate because people are already having to cut back on groceries and cut back on things that they would normally buy for themselves and for their families because they can't afford it.

They're cutting back on travel and vacation. We're already stressed out. Like there's so many things that are just compiling on top of each other. Also, John, it's April, right? It's tax time. How many people are going to be paying their taxes now? and then you're looking and seeing where it's being spent, right? Politics, I've said this before, is like almost entirely about taxes, right?

I'm going to give you money, and this is what my government gives me back in return, right? And one party says, I'm going to give you this back in return for the money. This is how I'm going to spend it and where. And the other party says, no, I'm going to have different priorities and I'm going to allocate your money in different places. Nobody voted for this particular allocation. People voted, in fact, for the opposite allocation altogether. They said, no, give us our money here.

Fix our own bridges, fix our own roads. Give us a train. Give us like a better train system. Anything. Anything for the American people. Instead, we get nothing. All of our money now is going overseas to a war that, again, the American people do not support and to places like Israel.

And they enjoy all of the benefits that we are denied here in the United States. Things like their college tuition is paid for. They get money for having children, whereas here in the United States, it is very expensive to have a child. I'm sure you can relate, John, and more. And also their health care is paid for, paid for with our money and even more. Like, 42% increase. It's just like, I can't even wrap my head around that.

No, it's just, it's absolute madness. And it is not treated like the madness that it should be. If a progressive were to come in and say that we are going to cut the military budget by 42%, you could rest assured that Jake Tapper would be having on. You know, guest after guest to talk about how that's going to make us, you know, so weak and so defenseless or whatever. And yet for some reason when you propose, like, remember when they used to talk about like the Green New Deal would cost two trillion dollars? We can't conceive of ever paying for that. But now they're talking about damn there, two trillion dollars a year on defense to defend against.

I don't even know. We're the aggressors in all these wars. There's nobody threatening us. We're the ones threatening everyone. We're the rogue regime, us and Israel, them regionally, us around the globe. And yet we need to spend all this money. You have to fight people before they can fight you, right? You have to do preemptive strikes against people just in case they even think about fighting you.

And so all that money is justified because it has to go there. And then the other part of that is if all the money is going there, where is the money being taken from? They are defunding every aspect of our government. And again, we were kind of talking about it earlier on the show when we were talking about NASA. If they defund everything else, then who comes in? Private corporations, private billionaires come in and they privatize all of our industries. Our taxes don't go down, right? We still have to pay the same amount in taxes.

They're not going to be like, oh, you know what, don't pay us as much since we're not doing as much for you anymore. We still have to pay the same amount, if not more. I'm sure they're going to raise our taxes at some point. And, you know, the American people are going to get nothing or very little, back for the money that we're putting in. Well, look, yes, if you wanted to get a tax scout under this administration, you should have been a billionaire. I'm working on it.

I'm working on it. Okay. Well, I think that that's all of our time. I don't want to run over, you know, because I respect Jordan and Brett so much. I'm going to give them the full run of the hour. But yes, as always, it is a pleasure to have you on. Where can people follow your work? You can find me on the Rebel HQ YouTube channel.

I do content there like four times a week, more or less. And you can find me, follow me on Instagram at YazK with 5Z, Y, A, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, K. And I don't know, maybe I'll start posting more. I don't post very often, but maybe I'll think about posting more. You can also see her regularly on TDR. Whenever my daughter gets sick, you'll see Yaz on TDR. So tune in. But anyway, thank you, everybody.

More to come after this. I want to go to space. nerd. What contributions to the progressive cause are you most proud of? Um, I mean, I don't, I don't have super high aspirations for a singular role that I can play in the movement or anything. I just, I try to present myself as what I think that I am, which is a progressive man who is driven by a, I think, well interrogated and well organized system of values that I try to stay consistent on and I demonstrate that that's the sort of life that a person can lead. and be successful and be happy and all of that.

And that should not need to be done, but there are so many people on the right that are trying to push men in the opposite direction that I wanna be able to do that. Along the way, if I can get people to care about some topics that they wouldn't necessarily care about, or that for some men, they might think that's not a topic that they should be focused on,

that's definitely something that I relish doing. And along the way, I mean, we've been able to introduce people to a lot of candidates. That's been a big part of what we've been a big part what we've done. You know, not all of them necessarily got in office. Probably most of them did not. And a lot of them, you might not even remember their names. But it was great to be able to provide people the platform where they had the chance of, you know, making a difference. Obviously, AOC and all that. But there's been a lot of great people along the way.

In the bonus episode for the members, we do some inside baseball. We're going to look at John's desk. Nice little spaceship here. Nerd. But it is kind of look cool. Who has Legos? He's taking apart a keyboard. Who has a mouse pad that's this big? He's got a dog with a nose that you can hang something like. You know what this desk screams to me? Nerd. And that's how we like him.

We love Johnny Pye. He's got his own personality like everybody does at TYT. Come meet us all in the bonus episodes. TYT.com slash team. David Soror. Need a turner. Is Adam Green Drop by? Charlemagne.

Congressman, great to have you. It's great to be with you, Chang. Your show is a great thing. You're informing people. A lot of the shows that I live on in all. and my MSNBC and even Fox and any of the other shows, NPR. They are so quick to decide that they know what this building means today. The one thing that I hate that politicians do, you know,

they talk about the people they should be talking to. Do they have any idea that they're their establishment and that they're hated? Or do they not realize that at all? People are so deeply in their little universe. I think it's very easy to not really question what you're doing. Voters have a right to ask questions of any nominee. Whether they're independent, Republican, or Democrat. The system is lawfully that suppresses competition.

How is it the year 2024? And we're still like, maybe they'll talk about pain medical. How is that like at one level, it's like, good, what we're talking about. And you're like, it's 2024. And that's always been the critique, that your critique of us is, well, you guys give good speeches. You put out good tweets, but you're not wielding actual power. Now we're starting to. My favorite news platform by far.

It's not even close. It's not a country and a principal and that's what you and I both work to achieve. And I'm so glad for at least half the battle has now been won. If you want to go really hear what's going on, honestly, you should tune into the Young Turks. Thanks for doing. Such a great job. Please keep it up, hang tough. That makes me so happy. Oh, I like making happy. I didn't know about that. This is a happy Anna Kasparian. You're welcome, YouTube.

Join the Dragon Squad by becoming a YouTube channel member. Click the join button below or sign up on t.com slash join to get access to fun emojis, a member-only chat, exclusive shop, TYT designs, ad free watching, and so many other amazing perks. Plus, you get bragging rights for being part of the coolest community on the internet and help us drive real positive change in the world. The Dragon Squad awaits, so join today. I am scary, I am threatening. I'm Darth Vader. Welcome back to the Young Turks. It's the fun hour. It's the bad boys of TYT. We're taking over. No more. We put the holla in Hesb. Nerd.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. I moved. It's not your fault, guys. I moved. Someone sent that to APEC. All right, let's just get right into our next story, starting with this. Oh, my God. Okay, let's take a sense of just how quickly things are moving at the DOJ. MS now has new reporting that Bondi's portrait has already been taken down. And you see it there thrown in the garbage. Net popularity of Pam Bondi.

In January 2025, you know what? She was actually in the positive side of the ledger. this at plus one points. But look at this. Down she goes, the more people got to new Pam Bondi, the less they liked her. The Trump administration is wasting no time taking out the trash when it comes to former Attorney General Pam Bondi. And if you thought the photo in the trash was brutal, wait until you hear how Trump fired her. According to a new piece from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi descended the sunsplash steps of the White House with President Trump, smiling at him just before entering the presidential limousine

for a two-mile ride to the Supreme Court. But that smile did not last long. It was on that short ride in The Beast when Bondi learned she was being removed from her job. During the drive, Trump told her, I think it's time. She would later tell an associate. The ensuing hours were as awkward and chaotic as Bondi's 14-month tenure as the nation's top law enforcement official. Trump and Bondi briefly sat near each other during the Supreme Court hearing on birthright

citizenship, but the president soon switched chairs. Later, Bonnie and Bondi would ask if she could keep her job until the summer. The president declined. There's more of Brett. Let's just immediate. Like, what a child. He's the one who smells yet he moved away from her. He smells like old cheese.

And she was like, he moved away from her, man. They were there at a grandstand and like be intimidating. And the drama wasn't even that. The drama was him moving away from her and being like, can I please tell to someone because I have a house in the Hamptons and it'll be easy. But no, so good. Yeah. Yeah, I think this disdain for Bondi has been brewing for a while.

He was reportedly unhappy with her handling of the Epstein files and also, And also, and I think this is the bigger issue, we've seen reporting, citing both, but for me, the big issue is that she was unwilling or incapable of going after his political enemies to the extent that he would like. And according to the Wall Street Journal, he had mused to allies that he was thinking of appointing special counsels to pick up some of the work he felt she wasn't doing. At one point, he showed White House visitors printouts of social media posts from conservatives trashing his attorney general. On numerous occasions, she seemed to go out of her way to appease him, launching what many prosecutors in the department viewed as weak probes of Trump's favored targets. Some of these cases were later blocked by judges or grand juries. The Justice Department even had a giant banner with Trump's face on it hung on its main building, which is an unprecedented move that illustrated his control over the agency. But all of that wasn't enough.

Of course, the two kept things amicable for the MAGA children, so to speak, with Trump posting on truth social, Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in crime across our country with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900. We love Pam, And she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector to be announced at a date in the near future. And our deputy attorney general and a very talented and respected legal mind, Todd Blanche will step in to serve as acting attorney general. Thank you for your attention to this matter and he signs his name. And Pam Bondi told the Wall Street Journal, it's all so positive.

But remember, Bondi is set to testify before Congress yet again. again on April 14th. So we'll see how positive the relationship is then. Brett, there's a little bit more, but I want to bring you in here. What do you make of this firing? And are you surprised by how Trump let her go? I'm not surprised by it. Like he hasn't had a really good relationship with his attorneys general, let alone the law itself. And that, I guess, is really the reason why they have a bad relationship is because even the lackeys he chooses as attorney general can't accomplish the legal goals, the prosecutorial goals that Trump has because even these corrupt people think he's too corrupt. Look back at Jeff Sessions, who was like, I have to recuse myself

from this. This is something that I can't go in on. And Trump always held that against him. And Tern against, and Sessions was like the lacquiest of lackeys. Bill Barr replaced Jeff sessions after an interim from Whitaker, and Bill Barr kind of did what Trump wanted all the way up to a point. And that point was what? overturning the election. And Barr very publicly said Nagandah, and they had a falling out. And now Pam Bondi, Pam Bondi, who is a lap, had been a lap dog for Donald Trump. She was a great prosecutor, apparently. She was looking into and investigating Trump dealings when he was in Florida and when she was the Attorney General of Florida. And then he donated to her. And as the story goes, and the reporting goes, he donated money to

her campaign. And she stopped. And she was like, well, you have purchased me. What can I do for you? And then a combination, I think, of her inability just from a legal perspective to really accomplish these strange goals he has of prosecuting certain people in the Epstein files. I think he's mad that like the Clintons aren't locked up. And he's mad that she wasn't that good on TV over time. Like she got shown up when she did her appearance before Congress. She, in the famous like, but the Dow is over 50,000. It's like, what about the children?

But the Dow is over 50,000. You can buy tons of children with that money. It just didn't fly. She's out. It's amazing that there is a photo of her face in a garbage can. as Trump's putting photos of himself everywhere, especially where it shouldn't be specifically like on the walls of all kinds of buildings and especially in the justice department where he should just allow justice to take course and decide things like, are we going to

prosecute people for marijuana? Yes or no? But instead it's like go after my political enemies from my political ends. Yeah, that's a worrying development. Like we can laugh at her being fired because he has no loyalty to any of these people, no matter how many times they fall on a hill or fall on a sword for him. He doesn't care. It's just about him. And I think that's why I'm really worried. The bigger reason to me is the weaponization of that department. And he was unhappy with how she progressed on that front. So Blanche, yes, interim, but you already start to see some folks in the MAGA movement. They don't seem fully bought in. I think a little. I think a lot of them think that he's pretty weak as well. And they're already agitating for Lee Zeldon

who is currently at EPA. And I think he would come in and be much more aggressive on that front. So I would not be surprised if Blanche gets passed over for Zeldon. But one other thing. We talked about this on the damage report yesterday when this story broke. It took a while for us to reach this point in the administration. In the first year of his second term, Donald Trump really did his best to avoid shakeups within his cabinet. But within one month, he's already fired his Department of Homeland Security head, Christy Nome, and now his Attorney General Pam Bondi. And it seems like this might only be the beginning with other officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez de Riemer, also potentially

on the chopping block. He's very angry and he's going to be moving people, an administration official familiar with the dynamics, told Politico, the potential high-level staffing a second senior official said, is focused on cabinet officials. Trump feels have underperformed or have generated too much negative attention. The Guardian also reported Trump had begun polling his advisors on replacing Tulsi Gabbard, venting frustration that she shielded a former deputy, Joe Kent, who undercut his rationale for war with Iran, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Asked on Sunday whether he still had confidence in Gabbard's leadership,

Trump offered a mixed endorsement. Yeah, sure, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. And for me, Brett, I think a lot of this is Susie Wiles not being present in the White House. That was the thing before he took office. I was concerned about. She kept him on track, on script on the campaign trail. And when she became chief of staff, I was worried that he would be more effective if she was around to keep him focused. She's out.

And it's just Trump one point of. chaos, turnover all over again. What do you make of it? Susie Wiles is amazing. She's an amazing character for people who aren't familiar. She was the chief of staff. And she just looks like a marm. She just looks like some lady.

She doesn't look at any lady. She just was like some lady. And that is perfect for her. She, in my opinion, in my assessment, is kind of a psychopath. Not really, but like she is this like, you know, a genius person who is able to do the impossible. which people don't know her face, really. They didn't know her face.

And that is her skill to be able to execute things that Trump would essentially otherwise called deep state agenda items. But she just like keeps a lid on it, keeps him from from drifting and keeps a lot of people out of the spotlight and knows, this is one of those experts who knows how to kind of keep certain things out of the news. But like Trump firing a bunch of people, like he's such a blamer. He's not a person who takes responsibility for actions. This is the guy who's like, I give myself an A plus on everything I did.

And right now he's going around thinking that because he's so wildly unpopular, it must be the fault of his cabinet. It's not your cabinet, dude, it's your agenda. All the people that are getting fired, people who are in running the military. These are people who like Susie Wiles, I think, are like, well, these are the mistakes you could make. You shouldn't make them. Just because you can do these things doesn't mean it's a good idea. And really all the the downfall of Trump in public opinion polls is the result of stuff he voluntarily wants America to be doing. Like tariffs make things more expensive. Cost of living is up. Invading Iran, bombing Iran, all these things make gas more expensive.

Gas is more expensive. People are miserable because everything else gets more expensive because you've got to get those things to my door or my. my Ralph's or in the hands of an Amazon driver who needs to drive it here. And that just raises the cost of everything into supply chain. Not to mention all this stuff that like petroleum products end up being like probably this polyester hats that I'm wearing. Like all of that stuff is getting more and more expensive. And it's Trump's fault. But of course, someone like that thinks it's not me, it's you.

But as my dear, unfortunately not going to be my wife, Taylor Swift said, it's It's ye, it's ye, you're the problem, it's ye. All right, well, with that, let's move to our next story. Israel needs Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah, but the Israelis are exhausted by all of this. Officials with the IDF reported that they are unable to disarm Hezbollah as it would require a near total occupation of Lebanon. They also reported that the Lebanese government was the only government currently capable of disarmament. With Harat's reporting that later on Friday, the IDF stated it was committed

to the long-term goal of disarming Hezbollah. The goal includes a wide range of efforts that will continue over time, the IDF said, adding that the current round of fighting weakens Hezbollah and will advance the achievement of this goal over time. But how much time will the people of Israel afford their government? As Israel begins its territorial expansion into Lebanon, attempting to hedge all the way up to the Latani River, people in Israel appear to be growing weary with these shifting goalposts. On Tuesday, dozens of parents whose children serve in the Nahal Brigade's reconnaissance battalion urged Netanyahu to reconsider their son's deployment in southern Lebanon, saying it puts them at unreasonable risk. After a Passover spent darting between various shelters,

many seem exhausted with the direction of the conflict. When the war began, Israelis were overwhelmingly supportive of the war effort. For the first two weeks of the war with Iran, polls found that over 80% of Israelis support the war, driven mainly by over 90% support among Jewish respondents and multiple polls from think tanks. About two-thirds of Israel's Arab-Palestinian citizens opposed the war, according to the Israel Democracy Institute surveys, and just one quarter supported it. But almost immediately, signs of fatigue started to show. By the second week, there were small signs of doubt,

such as a slight decline in the portion of Jewish respondents who strongly supported the war, according to the IDI polling. Now, by the fourth week of the war, total support has declined from 83% at first in IDI's studies to 68% who support continuing the war. That means, Support is still overwhelming, but a 15-point drop in just four weeks is still a seismic shift. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is much less popular than the war effort itself. Just 36% give him high or moderate trust levels among all Israelis in the fourth week of the war with no wartime boost. The rest do not trust him. Even among Jewish Israelis, 56% don't trust him.

and of four possible responses, the largest portion, 45% of all Israelis, do not trust him at all. Brett, a lot of this takes buy-in and support from the population. They had that for the most part with Gaza. This is a different story and support is cratering fast. What does this look like in the next month or two? I don't know. I'm not in the minds or perspective of people in Israel or southern Lebanon or anywhere. I do know that generally support for wars, wanes, when you see the real price of it.

And when the real price is like people in your family who have to, you know, execute the orders of a leader you don't trust will then support Wains. And I understand. Like I think probably what the situation is is people in America don't fully understand what it's like to live in any of these areas. And don't have the same relationship with the zone. I mean, definitely don't have a relationship with the zone that the people there do. And so I understand that in the wake of October 7th, you're going to have like a huge support

for doing things to make sure that that never, ever happens again. And the further you get from essentially that moment, and once you find yourself setting your kid to southern Lebanon to try to get Hezbollah to stop being Hezbollah along with all of this, It's very difficult because every kind of conflict that you have, I mean, people like to just pick a start date or pick a side and then pick a start date. But you can go back and back and back and back and back and back. And the more you do that, the more you think about it, the more enraged you get. And there's lots of reasons to get enraged. And everybody should learn as much as possible and experience that frustration to try to get to a solution.

But I just don't think that anyone really is looking around and saying like from the American perspective, us bombing and invading Iran seems like a really cool, easy way to win a war soon. And as support for it wanes, I mean, just generally, what I have observed as trying to learn as much as I can about this situation and this part of the map is like there is a thing that happens. people die. Israel then goes and kills more people than were killed in Israel. And America says, I got to hold you back, stop. And then there is some kind of thing that happens where it stops. Now there's going to be lasting things that affect the map after that. For example, like the occupation of the West Bank, for example, no longer there being Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula. like the maps change, but usually I understand that.

Like I understand that like if you're Israel, you're beset on all sides by enemies. If you're the people Israel considers enemies, like that used to be your people's land up until some imperialist shift changed the situation on the ground. And something I don't think American observers definitely for the most part can really wrap their mind around is like finding some very tense. temporary peace being a win. That's my thought. What about you, Jordan?

Engage those thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason we're seeing support plummet so fast is it's not just a one-sided conflict. It's definitely lopsided, but it's not one-sided in the way that Israel's genocide in Gaza was. They weren't living under constant threat of legitimate retaliatory attacks like they are now from both Iran and Lebanon. And if the reporting that we're seeing is true about some of these missile defense, some of these missile defense systems, not intercepting missiles, potentially system failure in some parts of the country, that is going to be understandably unnerving for the people who are in those areas.

And the damage from these retaliatory strikes is much more severe than anything we saw Hamas due outside of October 7th. So it's much harder to sell your base or sell your country and your population on a new war when within the first couple weeks, they're already starting to experience firsthand those consequences. It's easier to sell Americans on any sort of conflict because, for the most part, with the exception of Pearl Harbor, it's just not here. I guess you could count 9-11, but without those two exceptions, those aren't waged here. So we don't have to live under constant stress or fear or worry of having to scramble in the middle of the night to a bomb shelter or take refuge. That's something that many people throughout that region are constantly living under. I have got a buddy in Jordan right now who was saying he heard bomb sirens and didn't know where to go earlier today. So it's stressful and it's harder to sell a war when it's not one-sided.

But before we go to break, Brett, any final thoughts? No, I like that. I like the discussion. We'll take a break. Stick around. We've got a whole lot more. The Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. Let's get into some of your comments over on t.yat.com.

Huang June says how many Dow points do you think it'll take for her to get over this embarrassment. I think the Dow would at least need to hit 60,000. The Dow was over $50,000. Yeah. After Sessions got like kicked out, he made $100,000 in speeches in like a few weeks. I think she's going to be all right. Like $26,000 to talk was one report that I saw. Her speaking fee? Like for Jeff Sessions. Like they're going to be fine. And this private sector job, she'll be all right. There's just such a world after that. that she'll be okay. Yes.

Yeah, private sector pay is going to be much higher. I'm curious where she ends up. But I also, even more curious, who wanted to hear Jeff Sessions speak? Question for another day, I suppose. Don't shoot on the goalkeeper says, there's no way they didn't coordinate their hats. I don't know.

I think it just happened. I had a feeling. I almost didn't wear it because, like, it's such a huge brim. Look at that. Yeah, that's cool, man. And if you think this broom's too big, you're anti-Semitic. You're going to answer the question.

Welcome back. I'm Jordan. You'll joined by Brett Ehrlich and Brett. Have you heard about Noble mobile? Stop it. We don't do that. Yeah, I have heard about it. It's 50% or more on car insurance.

$50 or less on your mobile. All right. Let's get into our next story. While Trump is cleaning house in his cabinet, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, is doing the same with his generals. According to the Wall Street Journal, Pete Hegeseth gave the Army's top general,

General Randy George, the boot. General Randy George's departure was announced by the Pentagon, which provided no reason for his removal. The Army Chief of Staff normally serves for years, and George, who gave no indication he had been preparing to retire, assumed his post in September 2023. Now, George's ouster surprised many in the ranks. By military standards, he wasn't problematic, and recruitment was up.

The tension with Hegeseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the army, military officials said. Rather, it is the product of Hegseth's long-running grievances with the army, battles over personnel, and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the officials said. Hegset also clashed in recent months with General George in Driscoll over the Defense Secretary's decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals. Two of those officers are black and two are women on a list of 29 other officers who are mostly white men. And honestly, that's not surprising, seeing as NBC News reported this yesterday as well. Hegset has intervened in military promotions for more than a

dozen senior officers. The defense secretary's efforts to block or delay promotions to general or admiral for some officers has raised concerns that he may be targeting them because of race, gender, or affiliation with the Biden administration, sources say. But going back to General George, two weeks ago, he asked Mr. Hegeseth to meet with him to discuss the removal of the four officers from the one-star list, as well as the general's view that Mr. Hegeseth was interfering unnecessarily in Army personnel decisions overall, the officials said. Mr. Hegsseth refused to meet with General George about the matter, they said. And who is replacing, George?

A Heg Seth Lackey. The service as acting chief of staff will be General Christopher Lenev, a former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. Lenev served as Hegsteth's military aid before being named. named as the vice chief of staff of the Army. The Neves' appointment as the Army's number two official was seen by many inside the Pentagon as a move by Hegseth to position him as George's successor. The Wall Street Journal adds that with this departure, Hegset has removed most of the leaders

of the armed services. Hegset has ousted General C.Q. Brown, the Air Force General, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lisa Frenchetti, the Admiral who served as Chief of Naval naval operations. General David Alvin, who served as chief of staff of the Air Force, was forced to retire early, as was the vice chief of the service, General James Slife. Hegseth also replaced the top military lawyers for their services. But that's not all, because after the journal reported on General George's ousting, two more generals were given the boot. You could see here, Just in Pete Hegeseth fires two more generals, David Hondie and William Greenfield.

Jr., alongside Army Chief of Staff Randy George. A user on X called Havoc 2-1 spoke out against Hondi's ousting in an ex-post. This is very concerning. David Handi was my squadron commander during my 08 deployment to Iraq. His morals and honor were unquestionable. He used his personal security detail like a QRF, almost always being the first to help a platoon in contact. Things could have changed.

I know Rank can do that to a man, but I highly doubt it. The lieutenant Colonel Handy I knew wouldn't execute an order he believed was immoral which is why I'm concerned. I hope you land on your feet. Of course, referring to the war with Iran.

Now, Hegesath himself hasn't said anything about the ousting, but the Iranian embassy in South Africa posted this this morning. The regime change happened successfully. Maga. That's great. Yeah.

What are you making this? It's so good. It's like really good. I was one of the White House's, the White House's like Twitter yesterday. And while the Iran embassy is like, that is an amazing tweet where they show that regime change has happened as the generals have turned over and the people in charge of the military have turned over.

And now we have like people that are going along with the whack job. Meanwhile, the White House tweeted a video with Michael Scott saying, explain it to me like I'm 12. And then Hegset's stumbling as he's like, Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. I can't get a nuclear weapon. And it was like so hack. And it was so bad. And they keep thinking that they're totally slaying it.

But what they're forgetting is we're the United States of America. Like people, the world over don't believe this as much anymore. But they believe it a lot less now that we're like the good guy. We're the ones who like one World War II and said there should be freedom and not fascism. And in the wake of that, we should have like a free exchange of all kinds of stuff and you should be able to determine your own fate as a nation. I know a lot of that wasn't like exactly true, but at least the vibes were. And people thought we were the good guys regardless of what we were doing. Now like, Hagsad is firing people who know how military work.

and replacing them with his own schmucks. And what's terrifying about like one of my favorite pastimes now is to go on the subreddits for the military and read people like analyzing Pete Heggseth, people who have been in the military. And everything they say invariably is just like this guy like, A, what his positions that he were in was in were like where you put people who are not good at this? Like fake civil service type roles. They call fictional. And then he gets put in charge. Why? I mean, we know why. Because the president's a reality show host and this guy is cute.

He's cute on TV and has dope hair. But then we think back to like, what is his track record? He's a drunk. And one time on live TV, he threw an axe at a guy in a band. Like these are the Keystone cops. This is the gang that can't shoot straight. And rather than keeping people who can shoot straight, they hire people who compliment them. when they say that when they don't shoot straight.

It gets terrifying. I don't know, Jordan. How do you feel? Because all the stuff you do with the military is like, wow, the military is a bad thing. I hate being protected by the military. No, but like what is your take on all this? I mean, yeah, I think the biggest concern is like that tweet pointed out, there's the possibility that there was resistance to some, you know, unethical or illegal order.

that's something that the administration was very upset about even the suggestion or the reminder that you have a right and an obligation to refuse an illegal order. Top brass suddenly being gone. Maybe it's that. I don't know. But I think the ultimate thing is like he's just doing the same thing Trump is doing, surrounding himself with lackeys, you know, consolidating power. I don't think he wants any pushback. Pete Heggseth thinks he knows everything about. combat and warfare. And then also you want to, you should incorporate and think about his language

recently about how it's like, no holds barred and nothing's holding our warfighters back. And it's like, in one way, it's like, yeah, okay, this is just kind of like I watched a ton of war movies and love Call of Duty language. And then on the other side, it's like, are you talking about war crimes? Like, it's just, it doesn't feel great. Yeah, I think it's that. But then also, it's not just the generals. Like, reminder, the Secretary of the Navy was a bundler for Donald Trump, who has never been in the military. It's just a guy who worked in finance bundled like $12 million for Donald Trump during this most recent campaign.

And he's now the Secretary of the Navy. So it's just every aspect of our government is just lackeys. I'm extremely worried about what this looks like. We talked yesterday again on Damage Report. I think the most analogous is Orban's hungry right now. And that's where we keep like inching closer and closer to where you have kind of like a pseudo democracy or like authoritarianism light. And when you don't have anybody in the in the government in the in the bureaucracy or anyone remotely close to a lever of power who's willing to be like, no, we can't do this. This is this is too far.

We start to spiral quickly and I'm really worried that's the path we're on. Right. And like it's weird because it is these like if every time I read something, about the military, it's like, oh, we game this situation. Also, we have a plan for doing everything. Like, they had a plan to go get Maduro in his jammies. They have a plan for bombing the Shaz, or not the Shah, the Ayatollah's palace. They have a plan for it. And they love that. Like, being military brass, from my understanding, is like, oh, yeah, I love planning how to blow things up and take over countries. And those guys seem to be saying, like, oh, this is just either, like, Not something we should do or like you're unhinged and what's, you don't have a plan for it.

Not to mention like I still don't know why we're doing any of this and we seem to have really started it. And now we're in the hands of what? Like at what point is it too much? At what point do the people say like we need to get these weird literally drunk also figuratively with power drunk people like Heggseth out of who are out of control? How do we get them out of control? We've got more. We've got to take another break. Stick around.

You don't want to miss it. All right, let's get into some of your comments, starting with t.yt.com. Make sure you subscribe. Art guy says Jordan should just push Brett into a pool if he wants to advertise for Noble Mobile. Happy to, anytime. I'll push Brett into traffic if it gets you to subscribe to Noble Mobile. I get it. I get it.

It's important. I get it. 36. That's, it sounds very noble of all those things you were saying. So it's very noble to do. Yeah. 36 Chambers Dragon. Let's keep bread on screen for this one.

There are definitely host combos with TYT that really do just click and nail it. I'm pretty sure we've seen two of the best combos just tonight. You know what I want to correct you? You're looking at the best combo and it's right now. I don't know who hosted our one, but they can't hold a candle to us. Back to back, dude. How do we do it? Other way, other way, other way.

This way, okay. Yeah, now lean. Hey. Stop, just please stop. It's Friday, dude. Okay, let's go over to Twitch. Ten seconds. I can't get anything.

We just go back to back again for the rest of the time. You don't have time. It's a derving shorter social breaks. We'll be back. Welcome back to the Young Turks. Wow, what a great social break you just missed. Hoof, important stuff happening there. We've got a lot of important stuff to cover starting with this.

In the book of Esther, that the Persians, the Iranians, are wanting to kill every Jew, woman, child, and do it all in one day. The Iranians, the wicked regime of this government, wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire. But you have raised up President Trump. You've raised him up for such a time as this. And Father, we pray that you'll give him victory. Wow. Who wants some ham?

On Wednesday, Donald Trump took part in what was originally going to be a private Easter lunch at the White House. But for some reason, they decided to live stream it, which was a really bad idea. Not only did Franklin Graham salivate over mass slaughter of Iranians, but there was other lunacy like this. Great transformation requires great sacrifice. Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life.

You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn't end there for him and it didn't end there for you. Now unfortunately, that unhinged woman who compared Trump to Jesus is Paula White Kane, who serves as the senior faith advisor to the White House. And she's talking about the same Donald Trump, who is a conman, a cheater, who has been found liable for sexual abuse, who has reportedly repeatedly been accused of sexual misconduct, who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and just bragged about bombing Iran into the Stone Age in his address this week. And the list goes

on. But let's go to the beginning of her speech, where she also claimed Trump is the greatest champion of faith we've ever seen in a president. As I prayed, it was like the Holy Spirit just zoned me in and said, tell President Trump how thankful you are for him. And I think I'm, I felt like I was conveying the heart of God for all of us, that we are thankful for the greatest champion of faith that we've ever seen in a president. And we honor you because of your bold, unwavering conviction. and stand for religious liberty here in America and around the world. And you recognize the power

and the name of Jesus Christ. I remember when we told our first briefing, you can now pray again and worship again. They begin to shout and praise and say thank you Lord and sing in their highest ways. Religious champion is rich, seeing as this is how religious Trump actually is. The Bible certainly is one of, if not, I mean, it is the book. And I go to church a lot. Always on Christmas, always on Easter, always when there's in a major occasion. And during the Sundays, I'm a Sunday church person. I like to do the right thing where I don't have to actually ask for forgiveness.

When we go in church and when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink and have my little cracker, I guess that's a form of asking for forgiveness. And I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed. We were having fun when I said, I drink the wine, I drink, I eat the cracker. The Bible is special. The Bible, the more you see it, the more you read it, the more incredible it is. An Old Testament guy or a New Testament? Probably equal. Probably equal.

That's great. Love it. But Paula did not stop there because things just continued to get creepier. God always had a plan on the third day. He rose. He defeated evil. He conquered death, hell in the grave. And because he rose, we all know that we can rise. And, sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up. Because he was victorious, you were victorious. And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this, because of his victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hands to. Because God is with you and God is using you. to defeat evil, to restore families, to awaken the church, to harvest the nations, and to bring a worldwide revival. So I'm going to ask something, would you all stand and just, if you're comfortable, stretch your hand towards our president? And even if Reverend Graham, you'd like to

lay hands on him and Pastor Robert, and just come in agreement with me for Second Chronicles 714. Now, that didn't really help with the MAGA is a cult accusations, and that seems to be why the White House was quick to delete the replay of the live stream, as you can see here. Suddenly, video unavailable. But of course, the internet is forever, and every other publication already had the live stream and the replay, and the reactions were brutal. James Martin here says, asking God in a public prayer to help a political leader make wise decisions, care for the poor, seek peace, foster harmony, and try to include all of those. who feel excluded? Yes. Comparing a political leader in public prayer to the sinless son of God during Holy Week? No. And then here, Trump is a thrice married racist who paid hush money to porn stars he was having affairs with

when his current wife was pregnant with his fifth child. So yes, just like Jesus. And, Brad, it's not really my place to weigh in on someone's faith. I can make judgments from afar. I can judge them by their actions, by their fruits, so to speak. But even just the appointment of Paula White as the spiritual advisor, I mean, she's a televangelist who has promised miracles for certain thresholds of giving to her, you know, televangelist ministry. This person is just a scammer. And there are many such scammers in the broader religious space, but she does seem to fit perfectly with this administration. I believe it was Jesus Christ who said, and I'm paraphrasing, my temple should be a house of prayer, which you've turned. turned it into a den of thieves.

And if you're following the musical version, get out, he sings in Jesus Christ Superstar. I love comparing Trump to Jesus. It's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. They both had very powerful fathers, I guess. I love that. She's like, yo, you pay perhaps the highest price for your beliefs. You almost died. It's like people actually die for their beliefs.

Like there is, I feel like those people paid a higher price. We just, I mean, I guess what he has in common with Jesus is he sucks at dying. You know, oh, is he dead? There's a shot rings out. Oh, he was in a cave. Is he dead? Check the cave. Check the body.

Oh, he's fine. I guess that's how he's like, Jesus. What else did I write down while that was happening? I love that like, she said second chronicles, but the one clip. we didn't play of him, is him saying he likes two Corinthians. So that must be two chronicles. I like two Corinthians. Which part of the Bible does he like? I like the Old Testament. That's like Godfather 1. I like the New Testament like Godfather 2. Longer. Many say it's better. Muslims have the Quran. That's Godfather 3. Not for everybody. Not for everybody. I don't really

like it. It's more of a passing craze. Weirdos like it. And also like, I don't know, it's, it's, the thing that Franklin Graham does when he shows up there, he's like, like, imagine thinking that's an awesome prayer. You're there for Easter, man. Kids are looking for eggs. Folks are in pastels. There's going to be mayonnaise based meat sandwiches. Don't, don't ruin it, man. There's a honeyed ham. People, there's like seven, there's, the white house, there's going to be 25 honeyed hams. Why are we saying they wanted to kill all the Jews, the Persian Iranians? It's like, listen, I, have you read the Bible? It's all dead babies. It's like Easter is when you celebrate the death of, is Passover is like when you celebrate the death of Egyptian babies is really what

you're doing. It's very strange. Religion is very weird to have a spiritual advisor like that woman who is there just to make money off it is so counter to every single thing. Not to mention like he's standing there in front of like a golden, not a calf, but an eagle. And Jesus said it's easier for a camel to pastor the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. Like Trump is a very rich man. And Jesus was a carpenter. Trump doesn't pay them, then deports them.

You know? I went to Catholic school for a reason. Yeah. I mean, Franklin Graham and his father, his late father, Billy Graham, the brand that they have in the

Pentecostal movement is just wild to me. Wild is the right word. Yeah. It's just, if you really look into Billy Graham, especially his role in the 20th century, it was moving the ball toward the complete disillusion of social safety net programs that I would argue are closer to the teachings of Jesus Christ than anything else. Like taking care of the poor, taking care of the sick, housing those in need. He fought against the New Deal era programs hard. And he was in the White

House constantly trying to scaremonger over communism as a way to dismantle the New Deal. And he worked hand in hand with fiscal conservatives and social conservatives for decades to chip away at social safety net programs all in the name of God. And that he and his father are treated as like, or he and his son are treated with this kind of reverence in that movement is just bizarre to me. Kevin Cruz has a great book on this called One Nation Under God. I would encourage people to check that out. But just they're total charlatans.

The level of access, just like the level of access that they had to every president whose name you remember. Like in the ones that have been alive as you, your grandparents, whatever, every president, it was so important to get Billy Graham's approval so that he could go message to the masses of the events. evangelicals slash Christians of the nation. It is nuts. Definitely learn as much as you can about that, dude. Let's get into our last story. The hour starting with this. Congressional Dems have the right priorities. Look at this. Overall, 74%, nearly three and four say no, just 25%. Overall say, yes, you might say, okay, well, at least Dems like Democrats. Uh-uh. Not the case. Look at this. The majority of Democrats are independents who lean Democrats. Look at this.

55% say no, congressional Democrats do not have the right priorities. And we know Donald Trump's approval rating has gone into a death spiral, but that's done no favors for the Democrats. Their popularity has remained underwater throughout the Trump administration, despite Trump's constant own goals. As you'll see in this next clip, part of the problem is Democratic leadership. This is a trend line going back through the years, midterm elections in which there's a GOP president. Look at this. In 2006, Dem's net approval of congressional Democratic leaders was plus 28.

You go back to the last midterm. Look at that. Plus 19. Very much on the positive side of left. The bottom has fallen out. The bottom has fallen out. Minus four points. That is Democrats. Democrats own net approval of their own congressional leaders. Even Democrats don't want to. their own leaders when it comes to Congress. And overall, of course, the numbers are just absolutely awful. So Democrat and Democrat crime, absolutely this to me screams again. Primary challenges across the map. Now, case in point, in response to Trump's wartime address on Wednesday night,

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Trump for everything except actually going to war with Iran. Posting on X, has there ever been a more rambling, disjointed, empathetic presidential war speech? Donald Trump's actions in Iran will be considered one of the greatest policy blunders in the history of our country, failing to articulate objectives, alienating allies, and ignoring the kitchen table problems Americans are facing. He is completely unfit to be commander-in-chief, and the whole world knows it. But the fact of the matter is that Americans are furious with both parties, according to a new poll from CNN. Just 28% of Americans hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party, with the Republican Party a few points higher at 32%. On the Democratic side, 72% say that a divide over the nation's approach to Israel is causing problems within the party. About two-thirds of the Democratic Party is facing problematic divides over its priorities and its ideological position,

with a smaller 58% majority, seeing the party divided on whether Democratic elected officials should ever cooperate with Trump. Brett, I mean, we're seeing, you know, blind, just party ballot polling, showing Democrats have maybe a six-point edge in the midterms, roughly a 3 to 4% margin of error. It feels like that should be a lot higher,

and I think that reflects poorly on leadership. What do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things where you could talk about it for a very long time. So what does Democrat mean? So there's a lot of people who identify as Democrat who think that the others half of the party is wrong, right? Do I think if I'm a progressive Democrat, do I, am I happy with the establishment Democrats? No. Am I an established Democrat?

Establishment Democrat who's mad about these like new up and coming feisty people who have no respect. They got no respect. Yeah, yeah, they'll say. that they don't like the other part of it. And what you need to understand right now is it is pretty, right now I'm pretty sure that independence outnumber either party's identification. And it depends on where you look, but it used to be like if all the Democrats show up, they win elections.

But now it's not the case because, not because there's more Republicans, but because there's fewer Democrats is because people are looking for some kind of answer. There's been a lot of ways you can point to a realignment here. What it takes for a full party realignment is stuff like the Civil War, was when it happened last. And then the civil war and then the fallout over the next like 60 years, like the final flip of the South, right? There's a lot of stuff like that.

But it doesn't like there's no one really knows what they can do themselves. So they're just mad, I think. And it's a matter of the establishment of the Democratic Party not embrace or figure. They're like so, I think they're so focused on self preservation and protecting donors. like how much you need to raise so that you can at least have a shot in this, that they're losing on what the party is going forward. And there's a lot of people out there who are talented politicians. That's something that the party lacks a lot, talented, that all both parties lacked a lot. And they, and the leadership is like, I don't want to listen to you. I want to find

what I think is a cookie cutter version of me that isn't good enough to threaten me. And that's how you get like the, you know, some really good communicators out there. You get some Tala Ricos, you get some Buddha judges. Then you've got some people who are like really talented communicators who were just in a naked pursuit of power like Gavin Newsom. And then people like, oh, what does he look like naked? Hmm. And then you've got progressives who are like trying to convince you like, look, you were mad at me. And a lot of you people who are like, like the might as touch is the, the, what's it called? I've had it people. Like they're the kinds of folks who in the past would have talked trash about Bernie Bros.

But now are embracing it, which means the hard work that's been done here at this network over 20 years has borne fruit. Whether we'll reach the promised land or, you know, Moses like be banished to the rim of Canaan. Like, who knows? But when it comes down to it, like, I mean, it is a very precarious position to be in, especially when your opposition party. the Republicans is face planning so hard, but a lot of their themes are the same. The Republicans didn't have talented politicians. Donald Trump showed up, was telegenic, was a TV show host, and just destroyed them and hijacked the party. Awakened a lot of people and now sitting there with the guy that they ended up being with, like he's really disappointing them and the future lies in the

balance. It's so many ways to approach this, but I know we're running out of time. But I think the Undercurrent here is Americans overwhelmingly want a different system because Democrats are not going to adapt to changing positions, stances, sentiments from their own base. I mean, the fact that Chuck Schumer is still in a leadership position is baffling. This guy is not inspiring. He's not bold. He's not willing to take the fight to Trump and Republicans in a way that is sufficient. We need a multi-party, like, parliamentary system with proportional representation. We need public financing of elections.

That's just the start. And, I mean, the reason we can't get there is because both parties want to preserve a two-party system. Because it helps, like you said, Brett, it helps them in their pursuit of self-preservation. They, you know, they can beat back and unify and try to harden their defenses in the event of a primary challenger for some incumbents, but you do see some breakthrough, but then they, you know, they don't promote those people who showed, hey, my base really likes me. I'm really good at messaging. I have a different view than the standard pro corporate, pro billionaire, donor class Democratic Party. They get ostracized. They get alienated. So it's, the challenge

is one of the Democrats' own making. We are weird, factually inaccurate representation of the Constitution of the United States of America. Not referencing that and why we have a two-party system is baddie. I'm saying we should change it. Yeah, good, cool. Good luck with that. Okay, some of us want to fight for things. We'll see you on the other side. I'm a double.