The Young Turks - Part 4: Day 4 of 2020 RNC

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Part 4: Cenk Uygur and Emma Vigeland breakdown day 4 of the 2020 RNC. Speakers: President Trump, Ben Carson, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Kevin McCarthy, Ivanka Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Franklin Graham, UFC President Dana White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card.

And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterC. and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. All right, we're back on the Young Turks postgame. So it's Janku, Graham and Viglin, of course, as you know, we've been here throughout the night and after that Trump speech, it feels like we've been here for about a week.

So, but let's do it. Let's break it down one by one. Let's start with Trump speech. Okay, so Donald Trump gave his acceptance speech tonight. There were chants as usual of four more years, which I thought was the best ad for the Democratic Party that anybody could imagine. As they were chanting four more years, I kept thinking the rest of the country has got to be exhausted at the idea of four more years of Trump.

So I think it's a very counterproductive chant. If you notice, of course, he had a crowd there. They were not socially distancing at all, almost no one had masks. Every once in all this, they showed the cabinet once. The only guy who had a mascot was the head of health and human services. So he's like, I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to mask out. Because I just saw what COVID did. And so, and they used the White House as the backdrop, which is brazenly illegal.

It's a violation of the Hatch Act. He trolled in the middle of the speech and pointed to it and he's like, I wonder what that's called ha ha ha. And then ironically talked about law and order. I just broke the law, ha ha, but law and order, which is like Trump 101. But this speech had two main components. One was, my God, the Democrats are going to destroy everything and they're going to ruin America as we know it. My favorite line out of that was Joe Biden is going to demolish the suburbs. I said, man, I didn't know that was part of our plan. I didn't sign up for that. I kind of love the suburbs. I grew up in a suburb. I'm keeping it real. Okay, so I didn't know we had those plans.

And always like, but the theme being, we're going to keep America the way it used to be with a giant wink added it. Like, don't worry, I'm going to put the cops everywhere. We're going to crush anyone who dares to protest when we abuse them or shoot them. Okay, we're going to bring back America where white right wingers have always been in charge. And I'm going to make sure you stay in charge and you lord that over everyone else, that's what I'm gonna do. And so that was enormous section of the speech. But now it's important to note that there was a significant progressive portion of the speech. So he talked about how he killed TPP, how he was against the wars. That was a theme throughout the Republican convention that they were against wars.

Democrats never mentioned they were against wars. God damn it, man. Even Trump that mentally challenged guy in the White House knows that when you're in election season, the country's progressive. So they want to hear messages like that. He beat back to trade deals that Biden signed like NAFTA. He talked about how he lowered prescription drug prices. Obama had eight years. Now look, a lot of it is misleading. The stuff that he did on prescription drug prices, if it was great, I would tell you, right? I actually think the new deal with Mexico or Canada is not that bad. And I told you that in the play by play. I'm telling you that now. He did do criminal justice reform. Could he have done more? Yes, but at least he did that.

Did he do any police reform? No. So you have to take it case by case, issue by issue, and be honest about it. But he did do some criminal justice reform. He did fund some historically black colleges and universities. And the Democrats allowed him to brag about all that because they're so stupid that while Trump is running left on those issues, they're running right into the Republican Party's arms and helping Republican framing. So, look, the speech was monstrously long. That's another, and by the end, we were talking about Wyatt Earp and 5G and Iwo Jima and just, it got absurd. Trump ran out of gas and I almost thought he was going to faint at the end of the speech. Like, and then Iwo Jima, right? And but guys, it has to be noted that one thing

the Republicans do right is they kick the living crap out of Democrats. They understand that those are their opponents. So even whether it's right or wrong, whether they're lying or it's true, most of the time it's lies. They will say outrageous things about the Democrats. Oh, China wants Biden to win. You know, Biden is going to be best friends with China and Iran and he didn't want to kill bin Laden. All these whatever outrageous thing after outrageous Democrats are the worst. There's going to be anarchy. They're demolishing. the whole country. You go to the Democratic convention and crickets against the Republicans. In fact, it was littered with Republicans. It was the Republican after Republican saying,

now remember how right the Republican Party is, but we're just going to be a little less than them. As usual, disastrous framing by the Democrats. Make your case, they barely even attacked Trump in their convention. And now the Republicans return the favor by lighting them on fire. Well, it's absolutely right, Jank. And I mean, I remember in 2016, really, the first political event I went to with the Young Turks was I saw Trump speak right after Bernie Sanders had dropped out. And he was talking about how he was with Bernie on no corporate PAC money, on how Hillary Clinton was bought by the corporations and how he was self-funded. And he leaned into that populism. And I thought, oh boy, he's obviously steered away from that

massively and hasn't legislated like that at all as a dream, the swamp candidate. I mean, Steve Mnuchin is his treasury secretary. He has rewarded his campaign donors over and over again, et cetera. But as Jenk pointed out, Republicans know to lean into populism, at least the Trump campaign does. And this was indicative in Ivanka's speech as well, which was, I think, the best speech of the entire convention. They know to make your case in terms of popular goals. And obvious gate. I mean, it's all lies. Trump didn't really lower prescription drug prices. His trade deal was kind of TPP light and or NAFTA light, I should say. But it doesn't, if you say it enough times and if people start to believe it, that's really

all that matters and that's what Trump does, he markets himself. Now I will say that their marketing of Joe Biden is quite confusing. So for example, they say how Biden wants the inner cities to run rampant and for crime to infest everywhere. But they also want to talk about how he authored the 1994 crime bill, which is true and how he locked up people unnecessarily. So what is it? What is it? So they're going to be tough and smart on crime? The reality is that Republicans' position on crime is to the right of Joe Biden's, even though Biden is on the right on that issue. And so they can't really make that case. So they play both sides and hope people just get confused and just think Biden's bad

in general. But again, my overall takeaway about the RNC, Trump speech in general, so much racism, but God, is there a clearer message than what the Democrats were talking about with vague unity? Again, I keep talking about it. It's like an American Idol episode, it's schmaltzy, but there was no policy to tie it together. You can make suburban moms cry, but for the rest to people, what does this connect to? And the Democrats couldn't make that connection because they don't want to be tied to anything with Joe Biden as a president at all, policy-wise. Well, look, I think that if a progressive was running, we'd landslide them. That's what I've said from day one. Yeah, now that we have blank slate Biden running, I'm just hoping we eke it out.

Every day I get a little bit more pessimistic. So I still think we're gonna win. I still think he's a disaster. But Democrats are trying to find a way to lose this thing. Nancy Pelosi today talking about how maybe we should have no debates that reinforces the framing that Joe Biden is weak in hiding, et cetera. She's so bad at her job. She's like the worst politician I've ever seen in my life. And like we've been saying, they didn't offer anything. Now look, and by the way, the whole thesis of Biden's convention, Biden's convention was if we appease the Republicans enough, we have Colin Powell and Kasich, et cetera, they'll like us. Well, the last time Joe Biden tried that, or actually he's

tried it dozens of times, but one of the most famous times he tried it was when he voted for the Iraq war. And do you like me now? And Trump now turns around and says, idiot, voted for the Iraq war started by Republicans. How could he be so stupid as he agree with a Republican? Ninety-four crime bill, yeah, it was a disaster. We're guessing because we're progressives. Guess what? It was a Republican idea. And Biden's like, oh, I'll champion a Republican idea. And now the Republicans use it against them. But the corporate Democrats are never going to learn their lesson because they serve their corporate donors and their weight by nature. So now they don't get us wrong. Trump lied in almost every part of the speech. He had this

outrageous, outlandish story about all the politicians in Washington came up to me and said, please let China keep ripping us off and keep taking our jobs. Really? Name one politician who said that. Nobody said that. You're such a liar. There's such an obvious liar. I mean, the best thing you can say is hyperbole, he was joking. He didn't clear, he didn't say he was joking, but hey, we're gonna pretend he was joking, because that's such an obvious lie, right? And he called Joe Biden a destroyer of jobs. What is he, Thanos? Okay, so once he snaps his fingers after jobs will be gone. By the way, that's what you did. 20 million jobs are gone. And he keeps talking about,

before a certain period of time, I was doing great. Well, how are you doing now, Trump? You blew it on coronavirus. And on coronavirus, they constantly say, and Trump said it too. I mean, we weren't that bad. We weren't that bad. I mean, I got some numbers that show that some European countries on some metrics might have been slightly worse than us. No, we lead the world in cases. We lead the world in deaths. And then I meet up this new number that I've never heard before. And sometimes it's hard to fact check Trump because he makes up numbers on the spot that we conducted 40 million more tests than any other country in the world. There's no way that's true. Okay. Just throws it out there.

Just throwing stuff out in the middle of a really important speech with a teleprompter. They lie with abandon to throw in caution to the wind. Meanwhile, the Democrats are afraid of their own shadow. So yet the Republicans are monstrous. We're not going to actually destroy the suburbs. He talks about all they're in favor of human traffickers. Gislayne Maxwell is a human trafficker and you twice said that you were good friends with her and that you wished her well.

She trafficked young girls. That's what she got arrested for. But by the way, was that ever mentioned in Democratic Convention? No, it would be impolite. People in the Washington Country Club would be put off by being impolite. No, Jank, they can't, they can't mention it because Bill Clinton is a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention. So what? The Republicans mentioned everything anyway. I agree, I agree, but they literally are so wedded, excuse me, wedded to the Clintons and, yeah, I know, and other people like them that they can't see straight. I mean, they all run in the same elite circles. And again, it's one big club we're not in, in Ivanka Trump, and Chelsea Clinton, we're BFS, Gillian Maxwell at Chelsea Clinton's wedding.

I mean, yeah, they can all human traffic, abuse young girls, whatever, they're all rich and above it. But I hear what you're saying about the Democrats week. And I think really what scares me is the strength of Republican messaging at this time. Because if Democrats want to turn out enough people, but they need to have something stronger than just empathy, which was all that they focused on at the Democratic National Convention. And I feel the same way as you, Jank, I feel the air kind of slowly being let out of the balloon. And it's palpable. And I'm getting nervous.

Yeah, so look, lastly on Trump's speech and the RNC overall. So they constantly emphasize the, oh, it's going to be anarchy and mob rule. And Emma makes a great point about the hypocrisy of saying, can you believe he did the crime bill, which got tough on people and put a lot of people in prison. And then turning around and saying these socialist, anarchist, liberals are getting rid of law and order and we got to put everyone back in prison and brutalize them. So which one is it, right? So that was a giant theme. So why, why do I bring that out? Because it's obvious that they got two different polls. One poll showed Biden's killing Trump on empathy. So that's why all the speakers

came up and said, oh, Trump is so kind. You'd never believe how nice he is to families secretly. You're right, we wouldn't believe it because it's not true. And if he actually was nice to people, we see it because he's got verbal diarrhea. He can't stop himself. There's no way that he's secretly nice when we're not looking. That's not a thing, right? But they have a poll saying Biden's killing on empathy. And then they have a poll that apparently, because Trump accidentally, as usual, mentioned

it in his speech, oh, the polling is not good for them on the mob violence. Oh, that's why you guys keep calling him mob violence and keep pounding that and Trump pounded it over and over again. But at the end of the day, whether it's the 94 crime boat, the Iraq war vote, Biden's support of all the trade deals and on and on and on. Basically, they're saddling Biden with all of his own downsides, which are true, and then they're settling him with socialist, anarchist, anyway. They called it the Biden Bernie manifesto, he said Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism,

and he beat that socialism theme and that dead horse even more throughout the night, okay? And so we told you that the pundits on cable news were misleading you. They were telling you, oh, no, no, no, you put Bernie in there, they'll call him socialists. You can't. When they called Biden socialists, we told you they were going to call Biden a socialist. They called Obama Marxist and a communist. We knew they were going to do that. Now, if you think that's a downside, we have that and Biden's actual downsides. So as usual, Democrats very poorly played. At the end of the day, Trump's speech littered with lies, if we lived in a world where the media could fact check him and people believed in the in fact, and full of demigodry and full

of racism, I would say that it's a terrible speech. But in terms of politics, he played some themes that he knows are good with everyone like lowering prescription drug prices, because it's a progressive policy. And he plays some themes to his base. So politically, it probably wasn't all that bad and probably better than what the Democrats did. And the Democrats will never believe that because they'll think, what are you talking about? We were so genteel. All of polite society loved Biden's speech and polite society doesn't like Trump's speech. I don't know if you could tell from 2016, polite society does not decide elections. So I think we're going to win. But this time, you know, it's just we had a giant lead because Trump is so monstrous

and disastrous. And it's just Biden trying to lose that lead to land. Okay, so look, we're out of time on the post game, but we got to do the Ivanka Trump speech. So basically what we just did was the Trump and Republican convention rolled up into one, right? Yeah. So let's do Ivanka. Emma, I want you to lead off on that one because I know you had strong thoughts on that, okay? So and I'll jump in because I largely agree with what you said earlier, But we just did it in bits and pieces and I want to do it in whole. So go ahead. Okay. So Ivanka, Trump, I think she had the best speech of the entire Republican National Convention. She, well, Kaylee McNany did pretty well, but it was not policy related at all.

It was basically just an empathy grab. Ivanka's speech was littered with populist leftist messages that were lies about what Trump has accomplished. But really, they were attempts to appeal to the amorphous apolitical center that the media always ignores and pretends, oh no, there's the left and then there's the right. And then the center is in between them politically. So you have to be as centrist and corporat as possible when really progressive ideas appeal to that apolitical center a lot. So she talked about childcare and how she claims Trump has expanded access to that fair trade

deal. She talked about Trump's overhaul of NAFTA, even though really it was just tweaking it, criminal justice reforms, some of the First Step Act things that Trump did, ending the wars, which is what I've heard over and over again in this Republican National Convention, they're trying to go more paleo-conservative stealing from Tucker Carlson, even though they have the biggest Warhawk ever Tom Cotton speak tonight. So it's all fake. And Trump has, by the way, removed Trump, excuse me, Obama's rule requiring the reporting of drone strikes. He vetoed a bill that ended our involvement in Yemen. It's complete false, falsity. But she still claimed that Trump

had helped end the wars. And then she said that Trump was the enemy of big pharma. So all of these are leftist ideas that are antithetical to what Mitch McConnell and the Republicans want and what Trump has actually done. But she knows, and clearly the Trump campaign knows that he was saying populist leftist things like he did in 2016, where he said he was going to give everyone health care, everyone's going to go to college, free child care, whatever. It didn't matter, he was lying, but he said them, they worked. So they're doing it again. And because we have a center right candidate and Joe Biden, and because the Democratic Party has decided to kick the left in the teeth and put people like John Kasich, Kasich, and Colin Powell

at the DNC, we've ceded the ground of leftist principles to the right. And they're able to capitalize on them because instead the Democratic National Committee or Convention is talking about empathy and nothing else. Yeah. So look, don't get us wrong. There was plenty of lies in there. So we're bringing jobs and life-saving medicines back to the country. No, we actually shipped off a bunch of life-saving masks right before coronavirus hit us, even

though we knew coronavirus existed and was coming. And so it was an absolute disaster. The reason we have record deaths and record cases is because we reacted the worst to coronavirus. We were the most incompetent and we did not protect people's lives. That's why in this convention and in her speech, basically the message was, our reaction to COVID-19, not so bad, not so bad. I mean, even these record-breaking liars in the Trump administration, even they are having trouble having to temerity to say they reacted well to coronavirus.

Their best defense is not so bad, not as bad as you think. I know that there's hundreds of thousands dead, but maybe it could have been worse. I mean, there's no other country that's handled it any worse than we did, but maybe it could have been worse. So that's the best case that they have. And then at one point in the beginning of the speech, she said after talking about coronavirus, the results speak for themselves. And it was supposed to be a moment where they clapped and it was like cricket.

And she almost had like a Jeb Bush moment there. There was a little panic in her eye like, please clap. And every time she lied, you guys couldn't see it because we weren't doing play-by-play on Ivanka's speech. But I could see Emma's reaction. And Emma, every time would be like wincing. That was before I got too tired to react when Trump just lulled me to sleep. And I just wanted to end.

But Ivanka's, I was still alive for that one. Yeah. So okay, now, yes, all those lies notwithstanding, I totally agree with Emma. So she stole so many progressive policies there, prescription drugs. And the media said, oh, it's so Reeve Ghosh of progressives to talk about the 94 crime bill. Okay, you can't do that. That hurts unity in the, in the Democratic Party. What did you think? The Republicans weren't going to hit them? Oh, they're like, oh, we forgot about the 94 crime bill. Oh, because they didn't mention it during the primaries. No, they're hitting him on almost every speech. Can you believe how many black people Joe Biden locked up? Now if we'd hash that out in the primaries, even if Joe Biden

still won, at least it would seem like old news, right? But now for the first time Americans are hearing about the 94 crime bill, because cable news did its best job to bury progressive critique of Joe Biden. So, and this whole insane idea that no, the Republicans will never it out. They won't ever criticize Biden if you don't do it in the primaries. They won't ever criticize corporate Democrats if progressives don't do it in the primaries. I mean, come on, nobody's that stupid. They're lying to you on purpose over and over and over again. How many times are you gonna fall for it? And Jenk, they were so concerned, sorry, just to add to that, they were so concerned

about how Bernie would be attacked by the Republicans. That was the only person they pretended to care about who in terms of attacks in the general election. Everyone else is just hide everything, hide everything, hide everything. But Bernie, no, he would be the one that Republicans would attack. They'll just play kumbaya with Joe Biden. Yeah, and they said, oh, look, if we do criminal justice reform under Obama, the Republicans will attack us for it. Now they're attacking you because you didn't do it. Oh, if we lower prescription drug prices, then the pharmaceutical companies will attack us and that'll hurt us. Now they're attacking you because you didn't do it. Oh, if we pardon people like Alice Johnson, then people will attack us for it. Now they're

bragging about pardoning Alice Johnson and hitting you for not doing it. They're hitting you for all the progressive policies we told you to do because you didn't do them. So number one, never ever trust a capable news pundit. They're always wrong, always wrong. And they said it again this time, oh don't do anything progressive because then the Republicans will hit you. They did the exact opposite. They hit you for not doing progressive actions. Okay, finally, there was this bizarre thing that happens. And if you're not a right wing evangelical, you probably have no idea why it happens. I just want to explain it real quick. Near the end of Ivanka's speech, and it happened again in Donald Trump's speech. She mentioned how they moved the embassy

to of Israel's, our embassy in Israel, and the crowd goes nuts. Like before they're talking about Coroner, in Trump's speech, at least he's throwing red meat. Oh, the Democrats are going to rip the suburbs of shreds, like, yeah, right? And we're going to protect the cops ability to abuse people, yeah, right? But Ivanka didn't do any of that. So she's like, oh, you know, family leave or something. And they're like, okay, what else, right? And then she gets to, and we moved Israel, our embassy in Israel, they're like, so if you're

wondering why they're going nuts over that, it's because right-wing evangelicals think that things like that are going to expedite Armageddon. And then their beloved Jesus comes back after 7 billion people are dead. And so- Including, including the Jews that they say they're in favor of and then call Ilhan Omar and Rashida Taleb anti-Semitic for wanting to end apartheid. Of course. So I mean, that place is not, first of all, Jewish Americans vote Democratic, Democrat more than every ethnic group other than black Americans, okay? Seven out of ten times they vote a Democrat, including against Trump, okay?

So they're not doing it for Jewish votes, and that crowd was not packed with people who just got out of temple, okay? No, that's an evangelical crowd going, yes, more war. Meanwhile, ironically, they're bringing about how they didn't start more wars. As long as Jesus comes back and seven billion people are dead, everything's going to be cool. So that's the one thing that got the crowd super jazzed in Ivanka's speech. And then she made that ridiculous statement about, oh, UAE, this is the first peace, Middle East peace deal. Israel and UAE were already allies. It's a fake peace deal from a fake administration that never tells the truth about anything. So, but overall, I agree with Emma.

It was well-delivered speech. It was progressive in the parts that appealed to the American electorate, maybe not that crowd. but to the American electorate, and it was conservative parts that appealed to their base. And so, honestly, it was a better job than the Democrats. Do I agree more with the Democrats? Yes. But in terms of the optics and the politics, I thought Ivanka's speech was pretty good. And let it be known that she was the only one who Trump let speak in front of a crowd, the only kids. So sorry, Erica, Don Jr. and Tiffany, you got the short end of the stick again.

Of course. Right, I'm surprised they let Tiffany speak. I'm surprised they remembered Tiffany. I know, I know. I forgot about it for a little bit. Yeah, all right. Do you remember White Earp, but not Tiffany Trump? All right, guys, that's all we got for you guys.

Thank you for making all this possible. It's been a ride these last two weeks of the DNC and the RNC. We got two months left. months left, cross your fingers, and hope we don't run into Army yet. All right, Emma, thank you. Everybody check out Emma on Rebel Headquarters, of course. She's killing it over there. And I'm going to let you guys go.

Have a great, great night. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple. TYT. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.