The Young Turks - Partners In Predation - December 18, 2025

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

In an angry address to the nation, Donald Trump loudly touted the economy while doubling down on attacks over “affordability,” even as many Americans continue to feel squeezed. New reporting revisits the disturbing history of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, detailing how the two bonded over the pursuit of women. House Democrats release disturbing new photos from the Epstein files. At the same time, the Trump administration is quietly asking the U.S. oil industry to re-engage with Venezuela, signaling a potential reversal in energy policy. Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/TYT and use code TYT and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Hosts: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur 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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off.

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All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jank Hugar, Anna Kisperin with you guys. Banger show ahead for you all. So it turns out the oil companies don't want to invade Venezuela. So then who does? That's a super interesting question. So cray cray suflay. Like that story is one of my favorites today. There's another story involving a reporter that Jank and I had a disagreement on earlier this week. I will take my victory lap on that story and provide additional evidence. Uh-uh. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. And then is AOC going to run for president and how is she do against J.D. Vance? And then controversy later in the show, are white men discriminated

against? Okay, hold on. Hold on. Let's get there and let's find out. Okay. Ferris show in America starts right now. Well, let's actually begin with something that was much anticipated last night, and that was President Donald Trump's address to the nation, where we all believe that he was going to announce a war with Venezuela. But is that what happened? You're about to find out. Good evening, America.

Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it. One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. our country is ready to fail. It's their fault. It is not the Republicans' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring. But we are solving that too. And it's not done yet. But boy, are we making progress? Nobody can believe what's going on. In his regal and incredibly inspiring address to the nation last night, President Donald Trump told lie after lie, after lie. But that's really the stand.

for him. Now, we all thought that there was a huge likelihood that the president was going to announce a war with Venezuela. But that didn't happen. Instead, it was really a lengthy copy and paste speech where we heard much of the same things that he's been saying, lots of blame toward the Democrats, even though he's been in office for quite some time. We're going to give you the highlights. But before we do, Jank, what are your two cents? Yeah, I'm really curious as to whether they change the speech at the last second because it might have to do with Tucker Carlson and the reaction that this war in Venezuela or potential war is getting. And then I analyzed it last night and I want to give you guys the details of what he said right and wrong, including one thing

he said last night that I gave him credit for, which I'm going to now retract because of we found out the reality today. All right, that's fantastic. So for those who might have missed the show yesterday where I played the clip of what Tucker Carlson had to say about Trump's speech before he gave it. This is what we're referring to. Members of Congress were briefed yesterday that a war is coming and it'll be announced in the address to the nation tonight at 9 o'clock by the president. Who knows, by the way, if that will actually happen? I don't know. And I never want to overstate what I know, which is pretty limited in general. But a member of Congress told me that this morning. Now that was on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show. And honestly, when Tucker Carlson

had said that, I really felt that it was in line with some of the other actions that the Trump administration has been taking, including the military buildup off the coast of Venezuela, the fact that the U.S. had seized a sanctioned Venezuelan oil tanker. And then on Tuesday, Trump ratcheted up tensions by announcing a naval blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela. But Trump didn't mention Venezuela at all during his address last night. Instead, he ranted about Joe Biden, the Democrats. He kind of yelled at the American people because, you know, that'll make you politically popular about all his great economic accomplishments, which was one of Biden's major foibles telling Americans that the economy is booming. Everything

is great when they were really feeling a lot of pain in their pocketbooks. Now Trump is repeating the exact same mistake. Now, he claimed that inflation has stopped, which is not true. He said that there has been an $18 trillion investment in the United States during his second term, which is wildly exaggerated. He claimed that his executive order on drugs, or drug prices, I should say, was bringing prices down by as much as 400, 500, and even 600 percent, which isn't mathematically possible. And he also lied about how much the price of like eggs and Thanksgiving turkeys have dropped. Now, the price of oil has actually dropped because there's been increased supply. And so that definitely, you know, gas prices have gone down.

The price of oil goes down and that translates to the gas pump being a lot cheaper for Americans. But other than that, the price of groceries is really hurting Americans today. Now, Jank covered the speech in more detail last night and we'll link you to. to that video below. So you can take a look at that. It was his immediate reaction following Trump's speech. But aside from all of his usual, you know, bragging, the question now is why he gave this address in the first place? Because typically when a president gives a special address like this, it's because they want to announce something new, something that's going to happen. And the president wants to make his case for it. But that's not what happened last night. And so we'll get

to some of the other reactions in just a moment. But, Jank, I want to get right to the conversation. What do you think happened here? Yeah, so first off, I want to tell you guys a poll that we're doing because I'm really not sure about this. These are the polls that I love. We got it up on t.com, probably have it up on YouTube community as well. Why do you think Trump gave the speech last night, A, to rally his base, B, to respond

to the recent criticism, C, to influence public opinion on the economy, D, to start a war, but then scrapped it once he realized his base hated it. So go and help us figure that out at tyt.com. Okay, so now guys, I'll add to some of the things that Anna said about the lies, and then I'll retract something I said yesterday. So every lie is hilarious. He said every new job created since he's been present has gone to an American-born citizen. Not just a citizen, but an American-born citizen.

There's like 25 million naturalized citizens. Not one of them got a job this year. So this speech was in the teleprompter. That means it was written. So they wrote these outrageous lies into the speech. It's hilarious. He said price are way down. They're up three percent since last year. The average family is paying $208 a month extra in bills. $208. That's a lot. He said the unemployment is the best we've ever had in America. It's the worst in the last four years. It's at 4.6%. It was just one comic lie after another. But Anna, I like the warrior dividend that he said. He said, all right, look, we raised

$200 billion from the tariffs, which we did. That's not an extra 200. It's on top of what we normally it's combined all the tariffs and we already have some. But hey, you know, it's more than we used to get. And he said, I'm going to give it to the military service members, a check of $1,776 because of the anniversary of 250th anniversary. And that's a warrior dividend. I was like, well, that's smart. It's optically smart. And in terms of policy, I'd rather have to go to them than someone else. And it turns out, of course, he was lying. It's not true. So it turns out they're taking it out of the housing budget, not out of the tariffs. And it was a housing budget in the military. And that budget had already passed. So it's nothing new at all. And instead of giving them the housing

subsidies they were going to give them over a couple of years, they're going to. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every

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but it's for the housing that was already appropriated. So it was one giant lie. So that's who Donald Trump is. He's a two-bit con man. And Anna, what I'm thrilled about is that his own base is catching on. Of course. I mean, how could you not? Especially when he lies as brazenly as what he had to say about the money going to our soldiers.

A lot of those soldiers happen to be Republican voters. You think they're not going to notice that you con them? that you use them as pawns in your little political stunt. I mean, it's just so utterly disgusting. But also, you know, the tariff money that we managed to collect as a result of Trump's Liberation Day tariffs and trade war, a pretty significant portion of that money, at least he claims, is going to go toward helping some of the farmers who have been severely harmed by his tariff policy. So, I mean, we'll see if that actually happens, but that's what he's claiming.

Anna, just real quick on that, he's actually promised the tariff money to four different projects, including the one you mentioned and the one I mentioned and two others. He's a con man. Nothing he says is true. So probably the tariff money will go into some corporate donor's pocket and they'll just move the money around. So everybody's sick of it. Yeah, definitely. Now, in terms of what Tucker Carlson predicted was going to happen during the speech and the fact that it didn't actually happen,

and Trump did not announce that we're going to war with Venezuela, even though we kind of are at war with Venezuela. It's like a one-sided war where our military keeps attacking Venezuelan fishing boats. The question is why that, you know, inconsistency, what really happened? Now, was Trump planning to talk about Venezuela? But he backed out once he realized that going to war with Venezuela is not popular, especially among members of his base. We don't know for sure. But we do have a little bit of additional behind the scenes details to share with you. So apparently, when the cameras stopped rolling, Trump partially revealed why he decided to give that speech. So this is an account from Andrew Feinberg, a reporter for the independent, who was actually in the room during the

address. He writes, on X, some color from in the room. When the remarks wrapped and the president was given the all clear, Donald Trump turned to the press and said, you think that's easy and then took a swig of Diet Coke. Now, that doesn't really give us any information, but I'm glad we're sharing it with you because it gives you a sense of like what an insane narcissistic is behind the seeds. You think that's easy? Then Feinberg writes, after his Diet Coke swig,

Donald Trump turned to his staff and asked how he did. They all responded some version of great, very good, it looked really good. he then said, Susie Wiles told him he had to give an address to the nation. I don't know if that's true. It could be that he intended to announce that we're going to war with Venezuela, realized how unpopular that is and how it will lead to political ramifications, especially for the midterms, and maybe backed out. But at that point, he needs to save face.

You can't promote an address to the nation and then suddenly cancel it. People are going to wonder why. So maybe Susie Wiles decided you need to give some sort of address. And so they did copy and paste, copy and paste from older speeches. And he gave that honestly, incredibly boring speech he gave last night. Yeah. So I'm not sure either. It's impossible to know.

But here are the things we do know. First of all, there is a concerted campaign against Tucker Carlson. So if he's saying something, they want to try to disprove it. The pro-Israel crowd, I mean, the degree to which they hate me and Anna are pales in comparison to how much they hate Tucker Carlson. So, and that is a lot, okay? So that's part of it. But I have no idea if it's a tiny part or a big part of it.

Is Susie Wiles as savvy? I've given her credit many times. And if she just counseled him to give this speech overall, I still think he's. it was a good idea. And guys, I want you to, what? Yeah, hold on, hold on. I want our audience to be savvy enough, and I think you guys are. It's just I get frustrated sometimes when people kind of mishear what I'm saying. So when I say Susie Wiles, I respect her and I think she's a good strategist. It doesn't mean that I like her policies and I would favor the people she's backing. It means game recognizes game. That's all, right? So the reason why I think it's a good

idea, Anna, even if it was divorced from changing the speech and none of that happened, right? It's because why not taking a marketing opportunity? Like when Biden was getting slaughtered by views on inflation, but his unemployment numbers were pretty good and inflation vis-a-vis the rest of the world was not that bad, I thought he should have given a lot more speeches explaining that context. And he never defended himself and he got killed in the press for it. And maybe rightfully so, but certainly making your own defense would have helped. And but so Trump constantly is marketing himself. And, you know, we say that a lot of the military service members will realize that it was just a housing appropriation that they're getting.

But probably some of them won't. Probably a lot of people will hear that and think, man, he stood up for the warriors and what a great guy. And so this nonstop marketing that Trump does clearly works. I mean, he's won the presidency twice. So I don't begrudge him that. And I'm used to as maniacal lying. So that just comes with the territory. And these days, his record is poor enough that it's kind of hard to defend without lying.

So you see what I'm saying strategically. If I was the president, I would give these kind of speeches probably as often as possible. So I think in general, if we didn't know the content of the address he gave last night, I would in general agree with you. But I think given the subject matter, which again has to do with affordability, which he thinks is a made up word, has to do with inflation, has to do with what Americans are personally, very intimately experiencing on a day-to-day basis, they're not going to believe the lies because they know what they're experiencing personally. You get what I'm saying. So if he were to, let's say, give an address on something foreign policy related, well, Americans aren't necessarily. personally feeling the impact of the policies he's pursuing or how damaging they might be. His economic policies, and in particular, the sloppy ham-handed way he rolled out his tariff policy has had a negative impact on our economy and specific sectors within our economy.

So I think what happens, and this is what happened to Obama. Remember, at the tail end of his second term, he gave a speech somewhere in middle America. I can't remember exactly which city it was in. But the whole point of his speech was to brag about how he saved the economy. Well, Homeboy was giving a speech in, it was like in the middle of the country that had been gutted of all sorts of factory jobs because of outsourcing. So they were furious. It actually led to a lot of backlash against Obama because it made it clear to that community that he was speaking to an issue that he was actually super out of touch on. because there was so much suffering in the very community that he was speaking about or speaking, too, about the wonderful things he did for the economy.

I think that economic messaging is probably the one area in which politicians are going to have a much harder time lying to the American people. And that's why I was trying to get Democratic voters to understand in the lead up to the 2024 election that you can't pretend something exists when it doesn't exist. You can't pretend like the economy is doing great. When we all know that's not really the case. When we all know that inflation has really hurt Americans during the Biden administration. You know, all the lies that came along with it, including the idea that it was just transitory. Yeah. So let me tell you real quick what I would have done if I was Trump and to the point you're making it about Obama.

And then I'll tell you one last funny lie he had. So I would have said, listen, guys, I get it, man. your grocery bills are up and that hurts, right? And I've been there. Well, Trump can't say that. And I know how tough it is. And that's why we came up with three proposals that we think can help fix it. But Trump can't say that because he didn't come up with anything, literally, right?

But I would have come up with something to actually address the issue and then come and told American people, I feel your pain. That is really smart politics. And I would hope that the president actually would. But we all know that Donald Trump has no empathy. just that Rob Ryder reaction alone proves it spectacularly. He can't get himself to say, I hear you, you're right, there is a problem. He'll never say it.

And so it's that, and when you're up, you might be able to get away with that. But when you're down and people are worried about the state of affairs, him not saying it, him not actually addressing the issue at all is terrible. Well, after you did that, then you could pivot to, but hey, look, gas prices are down. This is this and this is that and give a positive reinforcement for your message and your policies. And that'd be the savvy way to handle it. Instead, Trump said that the average family is paying $5,000 to $10,000 less in energy costs per year. Come on, who doesn't know that they're not saving $10,000 in energy costs?

Exactly. So you're proving my point, Jank. I'm right. You're wrong. And by the way, last night, last night, several close Trump allies told Medi Hassan's outlet Zateo that it was shocking that anyone in the White House would think that this speech was a wise idea. As they put it, the speech didn't refocus the national conversation. It wouldn't move the needle. And it did not look like a strategic move of somebody operating from a position of strength. Yeah, he was defensive. The whole speech was defensive. That's true. But that doesn't go to the point that we're discussing slash debating. I hear you. So I would have given the speech. I just wouldn't have given this crappy speech filled with lies because that only further frustrates people. It does not help. Right. So the idea of giving a speech here to, you know, support people around the holidays makes a ton of sense. but not if you do it this way, it further aggravates them. Totally agree. In the next segment, we're going to talk a little bit about the latest updates pertaining

to Jeffrey Epstein. The New York Times has a fabulous expose about Trump's pretty close relationship with Epstein before they had a falling out. And the House Oversight Committee, at least the Democrats within the House Oversight Committee, have just released the latest tranche of Epstein-related photos. And they are disturbing. Come right back. Merry Christmas.

All right, a lot of great comments here. Let's go to Super Chat Boxes. It's real, guys, it's real. It was very cool to see Anna on Sean's show today, made my whole day. Well done, Anna on YouTube member section. David Tyler 6708 said, enjoyed seeing Anna on AJW show. It was fire. So Anna, I don't even know about this.

Yeah. So actual Justice Warrior is his moniker. His name is Sean, though. And he does really good reporting on local issues. And I asked him if you would be willing to interview me about the investigative report that I did on Newsom signature homeless housing program, which has been riddled with fraud and theft. And he was kind enough to have me on for a lengthy conversation to, you know, inform people about what's going on. Because I think it's important for people to know that, you know, some policies might start off with great intentions.

But if you don't have the proper oversight, there are all sorts of entities that are looking to take and steal taxpayer money. Yeah. I will throw that up on tyt.com slash press. TYT.com slash press. Moka Funk says the establishment wage war on the word woke. I believe it's because they want you to stay asleep. There's a lot of truth to that. So it's funny because right wing was. was like totally against being woke, but now they agree with me that there's a great awakening in regards to the donor class. So it's kind of ironic and fun. In Liberty and Guns We Trust said, they're trying to ruin Tucker because of Israel. Tucker actually has a heart and moral character. Then there's guys who are absolute demons like Mark Levin and Laura Lumer, and they

have tons of power. Well, that's certainly true. He's a conservative viewer of a conservative viewer of ours, right? And so that that perspective makes sense. And it's shared by a ton of service these days. Scandinavian Alien Dragon says, Jake, love you, man, but step up your home studio game. Anna is glowing. Why would we announce an attack on Venezuela? Why lose element of surprise? Interesting. So we'll debate the Venezuela thing. But I think that it may be less about the lighting and more about me and Anna on the glowing part. I did. No, no. I literally just bought a new ring light and it's fire, good investment. You do need to invest in your home studio. No problem. I'll talk to Jesus about it. All right. Athena Onken 5896. By the way, we love the constructive criticism.

Because it'll make it better. We'll have better lighting. Athena Onken 5896 says in YouTube member section, love the show. You all give me hope and help my sanity. Love your fire. Both of you. Thank you. Ronald Fan says, happy explosive Thursday, T.Y.T. family to you and Anna and Jank. Thanks for giving me the Trump speech when I watch the Trump speech. When Trump's mouth is moving, he's lying and he is a smoking gun. There's more smoking gun evidence on Trump in a little bit. The sensible streamer says, I was a Christian conservative Republican when I first came across TYT over 15 years ago. Oh, wow. See, I love that. I love that. And so thank you for that, guys. I mean, I just checked in on our folks we don't agree with on the left.

just for a second, and they're still yelling at us for converting right wingers. I mean, it's insane. It's okay. It's okay. I'm willing to work with them when they're ready. That's how you win. Love travels further than Santa Slate. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys. Bart is killing it with the Melania Christmas sound bites there.

Anyway, CDN, Norse Dog Dad, thank you for gifting Five Young Turks. Memberships on YouTube, you're awesome. Everybody hit that beautiful join button. Give us a Christmas present, okay? And so, guys, a couple of programming notes. Rokana's going to be on at 8 o'clock tonight, and he just gave his speech threatening to arrest people at the Justice Department. if they don't turn the Epstein files over tomorrow. So I'm gonna talk to them about it tonight

at eight o'clock stay right here, okay? And I know of course wanna remind you about how you can save money in the holiday season and at all times, t.yt.com slash switch. And I think they're running a promo now too. Guys, it's $50 a month. If you're paying more, there's no reason not to same phone, same number, same everything except your bill. I paid $39 because they give you money last month because they give you money back if you don't use all your data. and you're not going to because there's a lot of data. TYT.com slash switch. Save yourself a lot of money.

Everybody's running in now saying, yep, it totally works. TYT.com slash switch. All right, Casper, what's next? Well, there are some pretty big updates on the stories related to Jeffrey Epstein. And I want to start off with a big expose that the New York Times just published in regard to President Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein. So let's get into it. While President Donald Trump has really gone out of his way to downplay his previous relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a new expose by the New York Times really does detail how close they actually were before they had their big falling out.

Now, Jank, I'm curious if you're surprised by any of this? No, of course not. So look, as you're going to see in this story, Trump and Epstein weren't casual acquaintances. They were peas in a pot. Now, that doesn't mean Trump did anything illegal, as you're going to see in the story. But one more thing we want you to focus on after we give you all the facts of how close Trump and Epstein were is who the New York Times didn't cover in this Epstein scam. Well, in this particular article, they have covered a series of Epstein-related stories. And some of them do have to do with his relationship with Israel. But this one in particular has to do with Epstein's relationship with Trump.

And the first thing I need to get out of the way because it is important. Look, the Times claims that they found absolutely no evidence based on the evidence they have access to that implicates Trump in any abuse or trafficking of minors. Okay, so let's just get that out of the way. That being said, there were certainly some serious allegations against him that have not been proven in court, but nonetheless, we're going to go through some of them. Now, what they did find, though, and this is without a shadow of a doubt, is that Trump's relationship with Epstein was much closer than he would have us believe. So beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each other's closest friend.

In fact, even after Epstein had a falling out with Trump, apparently he still had a framed image of Trump and Melania in his home, which I think is strange. Now, the two also talked at least three times a week. I mean, my best, I love my best friend. Okay, I would do anything for her, and I'm not exaggerating. I don't talk to her three times a week, okay? But he would talk to Epstein at least three times a week during the mid to late 1990s, according to one of Epstein's assistance from that period. And Trump denied knowing about Epstein's abuse of underage girls. However, a tranche of emails released in November indicated that Epstein suggested otherwise. So in a 2019 message to the journalist Michael Wolf, Epstein wrote of Trump, of course he knew

about the girls as he asked Galane to stop. Now, understand, we don't have the full context of Epstein's remarks, but clearly he's saying that Trump was privy to the fact that minors were involved in some of these parties and get-togethers. Now, former model Stacey Williams also spoke to the Times and said the following that basically he thinks that, oh, hold on, let me actually back up a little bit because there was a notable difference in the correspondences between Epstein and Trump versus Epstein and others. So as the Times notes, with other men, Epstein might discuss tax shelters,

international affairs, or neuroscience. Right. With Trump, he talked about sex. And so former model Stacey Williams told the Times that, quote, I just think it was trophy hunting. And in recent years, Williams has accused Trump of groping her at the Trump Tower in 1993. Trump has denied the account.

She also says, I think Jeffrey liked that he had his, he had this sports illustrated model who had this name and that Trump was pursuing me. And that was the other thing that really stood out in this piece. Like, Trump and Epstein were very close. You could tell that they were buddy, buddy. However, they were also in constant competition with one another. There was a lot of like jealousy, a lot of competing. So it was like more of a frenemies type situation.

but they were obviously close. They were hanging out all the time. Yeah, this is not in dispute. Look, the only people left doubting this are the like diehard trump heads, right? And they think everything is fake news. The only person telling the truth that Donald Trump, their energy prices went down $10,000. Their drug prices went down 600%. Those are the only remnants left that still believe this.

I'm going to read the same quote I've read probably. a hundred times on the show. This is definitive. Trump said publicly in 2002, I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side. So did Donald Trump and Epstein hang out and try to have sex with young women? And by young, I don't mean underage, just young overall, attractive, et cetera. Definitely, definitely. If they were not underage, Would it be a problem? Look, you could have different morality on that, but it is what it is, and I really wouldn't care at all about it, right? Yeah. And so did Trump go underage? Seems so far

from what we know, all accounts are that he didn't, except that one comment from Epstein in one of the emails where he says Trump is spending a couple hours with Virginia Gaffray at Epstein's house. So I don't know, I don't know if she was underage or overage at that time, et cetera, etc. But in terms of did Trump know that Epstein was with young girls doing inappropriate things? Come on, of course he knew. Of course he knew. I would bet money on that. Now, obviously, we don't know without a shadow of a doubt, but that email that Epstein wrote to Wolf, I think is a really important piece of evidence. Plus, if they're talking and hanging out constantly throughout the week, how do you not know that he's trafficking underage girls?

and abusing them, by the way. And I want to go to Graphic 9 because there's one other very specific allegation that we should know about. So Epstein was a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago parties. Now, a woman who said Epstein trafficked her in the late 1990s and early 2000s recalled attending at least a half dozen of the parties beginning when she was just 17 years old and modeling during the winter fashion season in Florida. Now, Epstein showed up at several of them and always seemed to know about Mar-a-Lago-related parties and events.

And the parties were open bar, according to this woman's allegations. No one checked IDs and that Trump was all over them. And then one of the women who has never before spoken publicly about the experience told the times that Epstein had coerced her into attending four parties at his home. Trump attended all four. The women said, at two of them, she said, Epstein directed her to have sex with other male guests. So there's, you know, very specific allegations being made. Then you have these email correspondences. And while again, there's no smoking gun, there's no hard proof or evidence that Trump engaged in any illegal actions with minors, there's still a lot here that shows he knew more than he's leading us to believe. And he was certainly way closer to Epstein than he wants us to know about. So I've got more details, including the fact that Epstein would clown on Trump's lack of business expertise. Apparently Trump called him once because he needed, he was broke and he needed to borrow Epstein's plane. At least that's what Epstein told his assistant.

And his assistant relayed that information to the times. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not surprising that they weren't discussing neuroscience, that the only things they were discussing were their sex lives, because that's all Trump thinks about pretty much, and how, and Trump was constantly broke, right? Remember, he went bankrupt six times, whereas Epstein was flush with cash because he had that sweet Wexner money, and he had tons and tons of money being funneled to him, through him. And yes, by very, very pro-Israeli forces. So, and by the way, guys, think about it. So people need money. People want women. And who do they go to? They go to Epstein.

Larry Summers does, Donald Trump does. So many others do. And then all of a sudden, Epstein has tremendous power over all those people. And what does he use him for? As we saw in the emails, he uses it mainly to help Israel. So that's amazing. But I got to say, on a lighter note here, I'm amused at how naive I was. I was going to say when I was younger, but really, I'm pretty old.

Because when I was younger and I saw these, like on TV, you see these parties of the rich and the famous, whatever. And it seems like there's all these gorgeous women and you get rich and famous and you're going to get gorgeous women. And I thought, that's because, yeah, it makes sense. Women are attracted to that, whatever. No, half the time they're paying them. But I didn't know that. Like these rich people parties, I've got no interest in them at all, ever, ever. Like even if it's like totally okay and there's nothing shady, like it's just that crowd is not appealing to me at all.

But I do want to just share one other thing and then move on to some of the images that have been released by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee, never before seen images. So let's move over to Graphics 7 here because there were some other allegations. For instance, in November of 1993, Trump's chosen pageant contestants flew in from around the world for a week of events at his properties in New York and Atlantic City. At one point, Trump's former business partner, Jill Harth, said in her lawsuit, she sued him for sexual assault, later dropped it and dated Trump, which is weird. But anyway, Trump demanded that she provide him with access to a 17-year-old Czech contestant. So we don't know whether or not she complied and gave Trump access to a 17-year-old. And to be honest with you, just reading into Hart's background, I don't really find her to be a believable person. I'm just going to put it out there.

But nonetheless, that's what she claimed. But so far, in terms of illegality, I haven't seen any of that in this piece that's been proven. There are allegations that certainly would indicate, you know, he engaged. in illegality, but they have to be proven in court. The one other thing that I'll mention is there was a lot of gross discussion taking place, which I think is part for the course. I feel like you guys talk about nasty stuff like this behind the scenes. You tell me if I'm right or wrong.

So one example is, you know, Epstein would force his assistant to listen to Trump, as he said, some pretty gross and degrading things about women he slept with because he enjoyed watching his assistant get uncomfortable. So he would put Trump on the speaker phone. And so the assistant, this is Graphic Six, remembered one call in the mid-1990s in which the two men discussed how how much pubic hair a particular woman had and whether there was enough for Epstein to floss his teeth with. On another, Trump told Epstein about having sex with another woman on a pool table, which I have no problem with. That's totally fine. But like the weird pubic hair thing is it's not that's not for me it's for other people yeah um i don't know how i got thrown under the bus

here like oh you guys are what how what am i it's you know the locker room talk if you know what i mean yeah no putting kidding aside is there a locker room talk between guys of course right yeah is it about like disgusting pubic hair that clarence thomas and ebstein and trump apparently talk about No, not to my knowledge, but our stories exchange, stories are exchanged. That's normal. Yes. Okay, so real quick, let's move on to the next angle to this story, because something pretty big happened today that will further creep you out about Epstein. So, as the deadline looms for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, House Democrats have decided to already release a new batch of disturbing images provided by Epstein's estate.

Now, according to a statement from Representative Robert Garcia, the cache of about 70 photos includes heavily redacted photos of women's passports, images of famous men who associated with Epstein, and concerning text messages about recruiting women for Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, I mean, I've seen some of these images. I'm going to share, I think, the ones you should know about the most right now. So regarding the passport photos, several images were. photos of passports and IDs of women from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Italy, South Africa, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania. This one is particularly creepy. So here's one of the images

I'm talking about. It's of a person's foot. Obviously, it's just a foot with the book, Lolita in the background. And there's writing on her foot. If you can't read it, I'll read it to you right now. So it's a quote from Lolita. It says, she was low. plain low in the morning standing four feet 10 in one sock. There was also this text message exchange seemingly involving recruiting an 18-year-old for Epstein. I'll read it to you right now. I don't know. Try to send someone else. I have a friend Scout. She sent me some girls today, but she asks $1,000 per girl. I will send you girls now. Maybe someone will be good for Jay. Then the next message is just details about the girl that is being offered, which is, again, very creepy.

Finally, in another image, you have Epstein with three females. We don't know what their ages are. I don't want to say women. I don't want to say girls, but there are three females in weird positions and poses. Yeah. So I'll tell you the one that bothered me the most is the reference to the four-foot-ten girl. Yeah. That is a child.

Yeah. So these rich and powerful men are joking around about having sex with children. Ha ha. No, not funny. So look, we've been through this part before, but you know, look, Democrats get it, independence get it, but if you're a part of that QAnon crowd and you were super mad about the child molesters, I mean, here they are and apparently, you know, so okay, assume Trump didn't do anything illegal himself, but he definitely knew about this stuff. And apparently he was hunky dory with it.

If you think that he knew about it, but he was secretly angry, whatever, come on guys, you can make a thousand excuses, but it's plainly clear he didn't give a damn at all. Yeah, I mean, I think that's how things like this go when it comes to the rich and powerful, You know, I think the same thing happened with Harvey Weinstein. I mean, obviously it was an open secret that he was abusing actresses. But no one wanted to put themselves out there as the snitch, right? No one wanted to destroy, potentially destroy their own careers by outing a rich and powerful man that easily destroyed people who had any morals and wanted to do something about it. So I'm not saying that about Trump per se, but I am saying that about others that might have had a hunch. but we're too afraid to speak out. I mean, we're talking about powerful, rich people here. Yeah, so last thing for me is, I don't know, maybe the rules change when you're rich and powerful because, I mean, 4'10 is about a 12-year-old, maybe 11, you know.

I want to stop thinking about it. Yeah, it's really creepy. No, no, but like, you know, for all the, you know, locker room talk that I've done in my life and if you would, and I've been accused of it in the past, et cetera, hell yeah, I've done locker room talk. But if any guy friend of mine said to me or any of my friends, oh, it'd be so hot to have sex with a 12 year old, we'd think it was the most disgusting, craziest thing we'd ever heard. And we'd banish him. But apparently if you're the rich and powerful, they're like high five or something. Jesus, man. I have to say one other thing,

Jake, this is super important. So New York Times columnist David Brooks was also pictured at Epstein events. I am not in any way implying that he engaged in anything illegal. We don't know. But I do think it's relevant for all of you to know that David Brooks wrote a column decrying the media and political fixation on the Epstein story. Then these images of him at Epstein events come out and apparently a New York Times spokesperson on why Brooks didn't mention the meeting in his column. quote, as a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. So this is, by the way, obviously after Epstein had been convicted in the early

aughts, you know, in that case where he got the sweetheart deal. Yeah, Brooke, yeah, go ahead. No, just I'm going to add to it, which is that, guys, we covered on the Young Turks. We've been around since the beginning of the internet. We covered that 2008 arrest of Jeffrey Epstein. After that, everyone knew he was sleeping with underage girls. Everyone knew. And all these rich and power people did all this stuff after the 2008 arrest. Yep. I think that they thought Anna, and they were right for a long, long time, that they were all above the law. Bingo. All right, when we come back from the break, we'll switch gears a little bit and talk about this story that befuddled me a little bit about how oil companies really aren't interested in operating out of Venezuela. So what is this potential war all about? Come right back.

Christmas stuff that, you know, who gives a f*** about Christmas stuff at the crazy? Merry Christmas. All right, let's go to Super Chat. Tighten of Olympus 0.3 says Anna, don't shame me like this. I definitely talk to my best friend at least three times a week in some capacity via text call or gaming. But she's not shaming you, right? No, I'm not shaming you. That's freaking awesome. I'm actually notoriously bad with like calling people and like I don't

like calling people. And I don't really like it when people call me. Like let's just let me know when we're hanging out and let's hang out. That's so Gen Z of you. All right. Bad Shot Night of Gotham says, hi, Jank and Anna. We all know IDF soldiers flood TikTok slash IG with Gaza videos, dancing amid ruins, detonating homes, moss, looting lingerie toys, mocking detainees, verified by New York Times, BBC, war crime evidence, IDF reels empowered women, quote unquote, trends, tank quote unquote supermodel jokes, propaganda to humanize, soldier posts boasting destruction, no one involves civilians' chance. What's going to lead to? Global outrage. IDF boost settlements in Gaza, IDF films vandalism, burning food, use in ICC filings, IDF not our values,

but videos persist. It's time, Jake and Anna. It's overdue. We need to compile. and show Pierce Morgan. I think Pierce kind of gets it at this point. I'm not sure that he's the right target for that. But yeah, IDF is the largest terrorist group in the world. I couldn't be any clearer. And can I jump in? Because right now, there is this very real global effort

to criminalize any speech that is critical of Israel. And it's insane. It's absolutely insane. It's happening here in the US. Certainly, it's been happening in the UK. But one of the reasons why I'm trying to, trying not to let it get to me is because even if people are silenced, members of the IDF can't help themselves and they incriminate themselves on the daily. They post the most incriminating

stuff on their own. They say the most incriminating stuff on their own. So, I mean, have at it. I'm glad they're taking their masks off and showing the world who they really are. And the percentage of those videos shown by cable news is approximately zero. Zero. Oh, you must protect the beloved IDF terrorists. John Camille writes in a YouTube member section, TYT's values were not hard for me to accept when I first started listening, but I tried to imagine what it might be if my, my slash TYT's bias was starkly different. Well, look, for example, I'm for gun control.

Everybody knows that. Significant gun control, and a lot of the right wing hates my position on that. And I don't like their position. Does that stop me from hearing out, you know, fill in the blank, Tim Poole, Patrick Bitt David, to cross it on different issues. No, it doesn't stop me, because when I hear him out, it turns out, hey, we agree on paid family leave. We agree on banning private equity from buying residential real estate.

So maybe it's the way I'm structured. I believe in having an open mind almost religiously. So to me, it's no big deal if someone else disagrees. But I know that a lot of us were taught in these partisan brain situation days. the era that we're in, you can't have any variation. You should have a closed mind, not an open mind. And so, look, that's, but to each his own. So if you're a closed mind of person on any end of the political spectrum,

you're not really going to like the Young Turks because we're not just mirroring your opinion. So that's okay. You know, every show has a different audience, no problem. Merry Christmas. All right back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys. A couple more programming notes. We're about to hit our 20th anniversary on TYT. I'm sorry, on YouTube.

That's going to be on December 21st, but that's the Sunday. So we're going to celebrate it on the 22nd. We are the first YouTube partner channel ever. So that makes me the original YouTuber. And it's pretty neat. It's kind of neat to have that distinction. We knew that YouTube was going to be huge from day one. And I'm kind of proud of knowing that.

So check out our special on Monday. I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. And then tell you about one or more of our sponsors, prize picks. So there's a great Thursday night game tonight, Rams, Seattle, and I've got to get my picks in during one of the breaks here. But I want to let you know, guys, that there are, if you download PricePix app today, use the code TYT to get $50 in lineups after you play just your first $5 lineup, lineup is just your picks of that day.

That's code TYT to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's price picks. Okay, Anna. At some point, I'm going to do a deeper dive on this story because no one else is covering it. But, you know, there's been a lot of news about Somali immigrants to the U.S. a lot of attempting to smear the entire Somali population based on a fraud story out of Minnesota, which I think is wrong to do, but you should also call out the fraud. But with that being said, the U.S. has launched at least four more airstrikes in Somalia,

and that means that the Trump administration so far has launched a total of 116 air strikes in Somalia this year alone. So why do we do? Do most Americans even know we're doing airstrikes in Somalia? No way. They don't. We have all these wars all across the world from the anti-war president. The deep state is 100% in charge. And let's be honest, when Trump and Biden do identical policies, especially when it comes

to war, Israel, foreign policy, well, there's obviously some sort of institutional deep state that keeps going no matter who you elect. Yeah, and we've been bombing Somalia since the 90s. So I will do a deep dive on that, maybe later, not this week, but I do want to cover that eventually. That being said, let's talk about Venezuela because really fascinating piece in Politico gives us the oil executives side of the story, and it is not what you expect. So oil companies had a fascinating response to President Donald Trump who asked executives in said, oil companies, if they have any interest in returning to Venezuela once Nicholas Maduro is ousted in a regime change war. And so far, the answer is a hard no. That's what Politico is

reporting, and I am super shocked by that. Jank, what are your two cents? Yeah, it's definitely surprising because Venezuela appeared to be picked first because it has the largest oil reserve in the world and we almost always attack countries with large oil reserves. But I think that there is, I have a different theory on why we're going there and it might surprise you. So let's find out why it might not be the oil companies and then talk about why we might be going to war with Venezuela anyway. So the answer that Trump received, which I'm sure he didn't like from these oil industry executives is likely due to the current oil markets, right? The fact that the oil supply has been increased, which means more supply prices come down. So the U.S. benchmark oil price

was around $56 a barrel as of Wednesday afternoon. And that's actually the lowest it's been since January of 2021. Here in California, we're not feeling the, you know, the relief because they tax the crap out of gas here, and we're still paying like at least $450 a gallon, if you're lucky. But anyway, this has given Trump some wiggle room to attack Venezuela without too much concern about oil prices being impacted to a point where things are unaffordable. So he's like, all right, I got some wiggle room. But the increased supply is also having the opposite effect on these oil companies. Those prices are also very way too low to entice companies to take the risk of pouring huge

investments into the crumbling Venezuelan oil facilities that former strongman Hugo Chavez seized decades ago, industry officials and analysts said. And I want to just quickly correct something that I said on the show yesterday. You know, Trump said something about how Venezuela stole our oil. And I'm like, what? What does he even mean by that? I think he's referring to what Chavez had done under his leadership. And so U.S. oil companies have better investment options elsewhere, according to one person

who's familiar with the discussions. And then two people familiar with Trump's efforts say that the administration has only recently started initiating the outreach to the industry. It's not as straightforward to convince companies to risk capital in an uncertain political environment, one of those people said. Now, I've got more details on Trump's conversations with these oil executives. So, for instance, Evanan Romero, who is a former executive at the Venezuelan state-owned oil company known as Petrolios de Venezuela, now works as a consultant in Houston and is actually part of this opposition effort against Maduro, right?

So in late November, the Trump administration met with Exxon, Conoco Phillips, and representatives of the Venezuelan opposition group to which Romero belongs, although he wasn't at this particular meeting. The meeting was led by the energy secretary, Chris Wright, and the discussion centered on the possibility of the two oil majors returning to Venezuela, right? Now, Romero said Exxon and Conoco Philips erred concerns about the debt they are owed from their past Venezuela operations. And the Venezuela representatives floated the opportunity to take control of additional fields to compensate for the debt. So what does that mean? So U.S. oil companies were actually operating in Venezuela. Chevron still does. Chevron has some sort of deal with Venezuela and apparently they're happy with it. It's working out for them.

But other oil companies were also operating out of Venezuela previously, this is like in the early 2000s, when Hugo Chavez suddenly decided to force them to give majority stakes of their projects to the, you know, Petrolios de Venezuela, to the state essentially. You wanted to nationalize the oil. So Venezuela ended up seizing the assets of companies that resisted. And that's the debt that these oil companies are referring to. Now again, Chevron has been the sole major oil company to continue working. working in Venezuela, operating under a special license to produce oil in the country, and then export it to the United States. But Romero said that right, again, writes the energy secretary, encouraged the companies, quote, to get an understanding and solve their outstanding problems along the way, end quote, but made clear, this is an important part of the story, made clear the Trump administration would like to see more Venezuelan crude flowing to U.S. refineries. I thought that was an interesting part of the story because Trump very recently trashed the oil in Venezuela. It's like, ah, it's nasty oil. We don't want that oil. It's like, is it,

though? Finally, Romero says, we need those barrels. That's an important message from the government. So. So a couple of thoughts on this. So first off, you know, the oil companies oftentimes get outrageous deals with these countries. Why? Because they threatened to have America invade them if they don't. So that has a long history. In the 1950s, we deposed the leader of Iran because he wanted Iranian people to have a larger share of the oil profits. And so the oil companies forced Britain and America to get rid of them. And that's what eventually led to the Ayatollah. So it's possible that Hugo Chavez was saying, yeah, but it's our oil, and we're paying you way too much. And the Venezuelan people should keep more of it. Now, if they had a previous deal and they should honor that deal,

okay, fine, right? But in terms of a country deciding what to do with its own natural resources, that's not theft. No, you're taking their natural resources at the point of a gun at lower prices is theft. So I got no love for Hugo Chavez. But, but, you're taking their natural resources, But, but that's, that is very far from theft when you actually control your own natural resources. In terms of the oil companies, they've got two different conflicting things here. One is sometimes oil prices are so low that it's not worth drilling anywhere, let alone riskier places, right? And risk could be for a number of different reasons, including what type of oil it is. And that makes it more expensive to drill in those places, right?

And, but when you start a war with an oil rich country, usually because of that instability, oil prices go up. So I'm still surprised that they wouldn't want it. So which, but apparently if this story is to be believed, and I can see why they wouldn't, right? For the reasons that I just gave you, there are many circumstances in which it might not be profitable for them. Well, then we've got to pick a new reason why we're going to war with Venezuela, if that's not it. Right. And I genuinely do think that for someone like Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, it's deeply ideological. And, you know, Cubans are not organized the way Zionists are. So, but honestly, the Cuban refugees who came here in the late 50s are just as zealous as the Zionists are about their own political project. So I do think it's ideological for, for Marco Rubio. And for Trump, obviously, he personally is motivated by the oil. But, you know, I don't begrudge the oil executives for actually being smart and remembering, hey, Venezuela

burned us before. Are we really going to take that risk again? So we'll see how this plays out. But I am curious if these meetings and these discussions may be motivated Trump to avoid talking about going to war with Venezuela during his address to the nation. Yeah. Yeah, Anna, for my point of view, look, normally this would be mainly about the oil. Now this is the second big clue we've had that it might not be in this case. We shared a previous story before about it as well. So that, and it's usually a confluence of factors that leads to a dramatically wrong decision like this. And defense contractors always get rich from war Of course, Israel apparently has an interest in this because they claim Venezuela and Hezbollah

and Hamas are working on drones together, so they want them destroyed and smash the pieces. Is that a large factor, probably just because of the overwhelming power they have? But my best guess is this is driven by Rubio. Yeah. And you're right, Anna, if there's any second group in the country that's as zealous as the pro-Israel folks, it's the Cubans. Yeah. And you can't talk them out of it. And anything but annihilating the Cuban government is unacceptable to them, anything other than that, right?

And I disagree with them wholeheartedly on this. I don't think that the U.S. should be dragged into a war with Venezuela in order to eventually lead to the toppling of, you know, the communist regime in Cuba. I think that's ridiculous. It doesn't mean I hate Cubans. In fact, I have quite a lot of admiration for Cubans. Just keep that in mind. Yeah, and it looks so, it's so easy, right? Anna's husband's Cuban, and we all have Cuban friends.

Who would hate Cubans? What a weird thing to be, right? But does that mean we have to agree with them that we need to go topple the Venezuelan government so we can topple to Cuban government? And if we don't agree, are we anti-Cuban? No, of course not. The only ones who use that trick are the Israelis. Exactly.

All right, we got to take a break. When we come back for the second hour, I'm going to prove that. I'm right and Jank is wrong. You don't want to miss it, right? So come right back. Mm. Mm. Nah, right, let's try.

But I'm so bad at tech. So, wait, should I do this thing of the hashtag business? Andrew, you're still on, right? Yep. Oh, I see it. Oh, yeah, I do see it. Here we go. I actually did not realize that you'd be searching in real time, but I love it.

How much do people actually normally say? Yeah, the average American is going to save between $500 and $1,000 a year on doable. Yeah, no. You know what I'm going to do, Andrew? Are you ready to become a noble member? The two buttons are do it and go back. There's no going back. We're doing it.

We're doing it. Here we go, Noble, Mobile. Oh, my gosh, I just called you and are you now on Noble and not Verizon? Why didn't you tell me it was going to be super easy? I know, man. Now you just stay away from your phone and watch the money roll in. I can do that. You can go phone, yeah.

What the fuck? What the f- Jank, you still there? Andrew? Oh, well, at least I got an Oval Mo. It was really just one tape. The whole thing is wild. It's in my shoe.

It's in my shoes. Hi, I'm Brett Ehrlich with Breaking News with Brett Ehrlich. This is Breaking News with Brett Ehrlich. Hi. Red Ehrlich here. According to EPA head Scott Pruitt, climate change is not happening. He cited a meme on Facebook he saw. When pressed to back up this source, he said it must be.

accurate because the watermark said it was made by a scientist. So, your move, truth. At TYT, our mission is to boldly pursue truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change. At a time when corporate capture of our media, our government, and our politics is nearly absolute. Everyday working people need a champion of fight for them and a push back against the powerful interests that threaten our democracy itself. At TYT, we're

proudly progressive and call out corruption and duplicity wherever we see it from Republicans, Democrats, or anyone else. And unlike mainstream news media outlets, we're not beholden to corporate advertisers to defense contractors, to Wall Street, or to Big Pharma. We only have to answer to our audience, and for nearly two decades, we've accomplished that by delivering honest, timely, and insightful perspectives on the day's news without fear or favor or concern for whose toes we might step on or which powerful elites we might offend. And while we're super serious about the news, we also manage to do it in a way that is fun and lighthearted. We can do this together and serve our audience. And yes, have fun doing it.

You are the media revolution. You are much needed. TYT, TYT. The place is like 95% TYT on. We go out of the church, which is my favorite channel. We're getting that message out. Frank and the young church do an extraordinarily good job. No matter what mainstream media says, you have to listen to the young church.

support us on the internet. That's what gives us strength. That's what allows anyone who was in there who was undecided to think. One side seems to be winning. They seem to have a bigger army. It might be a reason for that. So thank you guys. I will read the book. How does Santa go down? How does Santa do it? Does he cinch up his belt? I'm back on the online news show, Jank and Anna with you guys. Whenever Trump goes on on anti-immigrant rant, we should just run tape of Melania talking. No, no. Melania reading a Christmas story to children recently was probably my favorite development

in Melania's world. Because, like, you know, we all know Eastern Europeans, and yes, this is a stereotype, but I'm going to repeat it because Armenians are kind of like Eastern Europeans due to, like, Soviet influence. They're very stoic, if that makes any sense. So she just doesn't seem interested at all in what she's doing. And then, you know, the accent is fun, yes. But maybe, maybe we'll talk about it at some point.

Who knows? Yeah. All right. On for everybody. Okay, well, thanks. Okay, we got to talk about this really fascinating story about what was really going on behind the scenes prior to the U.S. striking Iran's nuclear facilities. So in June, Israel assassinated several nuclear scientists in Iran in an operation dubbed Narnia.

Now, a joint report by the Washington Post and PBS sheds light on the civilian casualties and more. In fact, take a look at this video and pay close attention to how many civilians were killed in these strikes to take out the nuclear scientists. We are able to confirm the locations and tally civilian casualties from the strikes on Abdul Hamid Minutja and Ahmed Reza Zolfagari. Both nuclear engineering professors killed just blocks from each other. Further east, we confirm the location and casualties from the strike on Mansour Asgari, a physics performance. sanctioned by the U.S. for alleged ties to nuclear weapons development. And inside at Abad neighborhood, where Tehranchi was killed, witness accounts combined with images of the direction of the blast and structural damage,

indicate a weapon or weapons with the force of a roughly 500-pound bomb. And in that last description, there were 10 civilian casualties. Overall, the post estimated that more than 70 civilians were killed across five, separate strikes to take out Iran's nuclear scientists. Now before we get to the rest of this piece, which has some pretty explosive details, Jank, your two cents? Yeah, first of all, not surprising because the Israelis are terrorists. So they kill civilians all the time, including physicists and their neighbors and their

family members and their children. And I have a question, does that mean other countries are totally within bounds to murder Israeli physicists? And if not, why not? I know. I mean, the way that the media here in the United States treats the assassination of nuclear scientists in Iran is pretty gross because we wouldn't stand for it. You're right if it were happening in Israel. And remember, Israel's the one that has this clandestine supposedly secret, but we all know they have it, nuclear program. Right? They're not part of the non-proliferation treaty. They don't have to abide by, you know, similar international rules

that other nuclear powers do abide by. And so in almost every situation imaginable, Israel gets a carve out and nuclear weapons and the assassination of nuclear scientists is certainly a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Yeah, just one quick thing, Anna, although to be fair, I don't know if they have any physicists in Israel, because all they did was steal everyone else's technology. They're a bunch of thieves. They stole our nuclear weapons. And then we let Robert Maxwell walk. We didn't even arrest them after stealing it. He also stole our uranium. The Israelis are constantly bragging about how they're so good at science. No, they're mainly good at stealing. So that's just a fact that they are thieves and they stole nukes from America from us.

And they should have been gravely punished for it. And they're constantly wanting two different sets of rules. Israel gets to murder anyone they like. But if you ever even think about touching in Israeli, you are discussing terrorists and will destroy tens of thousands of civilians near you. That's the terrorist government of Israel. But let's tell you more about their terrorism. So Operation Narnia took place in June. And this was at the start of the so-called 12-day war. But the Israeli government has been assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists for many, many years. It's not like they did it for the first time this past summer. But previous operations were small and they were carried out by individual Israeli agents, not through these

big military operations or military strikes. Obviously, Operation Narnia was different. The Israeli government felt it had an ideal opportunity to attack Iran after Hezbollah was decimated and following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, of course. Now, the Washington Post also reports that during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first visit to the White House to meet with Trump this year, he proposed to Trump four ways to attack Iran. The first was what the operation would look like if Israel attacked alone, but God forbid they ever do that, right? Now, the second option was for Israel to take the lead with minimal U.S. support. The third was full collaboration between the two allies. The last option was for the U.S. to take the

lead. Now, Israel never carries out its dirty deeds without the assistance and funding of the United States government. I'm really sad to share that with you, but that's just true. Soon, Trump set a 60-day deadline for Iran to agree to a nuclear deal. And if you guys can remember, as soon as that deadline passed, Trump and Netanyahu both knew the attack on Iran was coming, and in fact, the attack on Iran took place. But in public, this is the important part of the story. They really played, I wouldn't say played dumb, but they pretended, at least Trump did, that he was still pursuing peace. He was still pursuing a negotiation with Iran, but that actually wasn't the case. That was just a head fake. In public, they said other things. So Israeli officials

leaked word that top net Yahoo advisor, Ron Dermar, and Mossad chief David Barnia, would soon meet U.S. Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff, a new round of U.S. Iranian nuclear talks was scheduled for Sunday, June 15th. The planned diplomacy was Zerruz and officials from both countries encouraged media reports of a U.S. Israeli rift. A U.S. Israeli rift. The president is wagging his finger at Israel and saying, you are being very bad. You must stop right now. How many times have we seen those headlines? We've seen them quite a bit, haven't we? And every time, I think it's a head fake. Because one day after the deadline passed, obviously the strikes start getting carried out by the United States. And this fake out was actually reported by Barack Ravid at

Axios, former IDF, back in June shortly after the attack. And so at the time, a Trump advisor told Reveed the following. It was a head fake. Trump knew the media couldn't resist amplifying it. He knew the Iranians might think he was bluffing. Well, everyone was wrong. Now, among the media figures, amplifying Trump's alleged openness, which was totally fake, openness to diplomacy, was Barack Reveed himself. So 10 days before that article was published, he posted this on X. Trump says he wants an agreement with Iran and stress the U.S. is close to a good deal with the Iranians. Quote, I prefer a deal. As long as I think there is a chance, I would rather that they, the Israelis, don't go in in order not to ruin it. So look, the real question here is

is, Barack Ravid, stupid or evil? That's always the question when we have these debates, right? So was he played by the Trump administration? You know, because a lot of these reporters love to get the scoop. And so they'll be contacted by someone in the government who's basically using them for their own purposes and just like be stenographers and repeat what the government officials tell them. There's really not much thought that goes into it. I don't think that's necessarily someone being evil in the media. It's just be a little smarter about how journalists get played all the time for politicians on purposes. Or there could be something far more nefarious where, because I mean, how many times are we going to see

these headlines from Barack Reveed? Let's actually go to some of them. Let's go to Graphics 6. Israel's attack in Qatar infuriated Trump advisors official say, Trump advisors official say. That was actually true. So that's not a good example. But scoop, Trump to Netanyahu on Gaza talks. You're always so effing negative. Here's another one. Trump promised not to let Israel break Gaza ceasefire to get deal. They've been breaking the ceasefire. Trump demanded Netanyahu commit not to strike Qatar again. I mean, they haven't struck Qatar since, but I wouldn't bet money on them not doing it in the future.

Yeah, so I defended Barack Ravid the other day because, I mean, said a little bit of an ironic defense, but what do establishing reporters do? They take notes for the powerful, and then they print them, they don't question them, and they getting so excited. They're like, oh, we got a leak. We got a source. We got a source inside the White House, right? So were some of those stories true? I think some of those stories are true. Like, he was genuinely upset about Qatar. That's been proven in a lot of different ways. And so those reporters have the excuse of saying, hey, listen, guys, I'm reporting what they are saying inside the White House. And yeah, some of the time it's true. And some of the time,

they're lying. But you should know that. That's kind of obvious, right? Now, I don't think it's necessarily obvious to their readers. I think they should be a lot clearer that their sources have an agenda. So that's what's considered normal in Washington. That's already problematic, but considered relatively normal. But now that I see this report, it does make me think, well, wait a minute, if it's a ruse that every once in a while they'll plant a story in the press, that they're negotiating when in fact they're not negotiating or that America's upset with Israel when in fact they're not upset with Israel, they're coordinating with Israel on who they're going to kill, attack, et cetera, et cetera. And Barack Ravid is a part of that. Then I have no conclusions,

but I do have questions. Did he get suckered like a normal mainstream media reporter or is he an Israeli asset that wanted to plant that story so that Iran would let their guard down and Israel could attack them. And so then the former IDF soldier, potentially current Israeli asset, helped Israel do subterfuge to do their terrorist attack. Well, that's a good question. And Axios should be asked that question. Of course, they won't be because mainstream media thinks helping Israel do attacks is probably part of the job of a normal traditional media reporter. I mean, they love Israel so much. They wouldn't find that to be a betrayal. even if he wasn't Israeli asset.

And my feelings about Ravid have absolutely evolved. In the very beginning, I actually liked his reporting and, you know, trusted him. But as the headlines, it first started with Biden, by the way, didn't start with Trump. As the headlines became increasingly repetitive, you know, the, oh, the U.S. government is really angry with Netanyahu, Biden, very mad. I'm like, how many times, like, I don't think Ravita's stupid, right? Like, how many times are you going to repeat the same story and then get played? Unless you know you're getting played and you're maybe part of the whole game. I don't know.

We can only speculate. But my point is, at some point, you as a reporter have to include in your piece, this is now the fifth time the Trump administration has sent us strongly. worded letter to Netanyahu or was upset, but continued funding the atrocities that the president claims he's upset about. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, again, so these so-called reporters are so in the tank for Israel just naturally because of the group think in Washington that they don't even consider the idea of cutting funding for Israel as a possibility. Like that's not a thought that's ever occurred to them. So they keep saying, well, I mean, what could Biden and Trump do?

They already sent a strongly worded letter. They could cut their funding. They're like, what cut their funding? What kind of a disgusting anti-Semite are you? Right. So that's literally every reporter in Washington, to be fair to Barack Ravid. But again, since this is a literal specific Israeli tactic to use American press to trick their adversaries. And this is the main guy that's been spreading those stories. And let's keep it real. He's former IDF. It's a fair question. And I'm not saying I know at all, but it's a fair question. Is he working for the Israelis, given that this is a literal strategy of the Israeli government. And remember, Barack Ravid is the one who gets the scoops. Yeah. And by the way, if he isn't,

Ferris show in America, shouldn't he at least say, shouldn't Axios or Barack Rabid come out and say, you know, we're super mad at the Israeli government and the American government because they used us as part of their subterfuge to attack Iran and we're livid about it. If they did use me like that, anybody did, I would be furious. Is Axios furious? Or do they think, high five, we helped Israel like we wanted to. I don't know because they're not real guys. Come on. This isn't about Axios or Barack Ravid. None of them are real reporters. They're all do propaganda. Don't say that. Don't say that. They're not real reporters at all. Okay. I don't like the blanket statements. I like talking about specific journalists and what we think about the job you're doing. 90% of traditional

reporters are propagandists. Okay. I've never like yeah. 10 and the 10% we give credit to all the time. Washington posted a great story today. And this is a good story today. So we're fair, credit where credit is due. I'd love to give them credit 100% of the time. But 90% of the time, it's pulp, it's garbage. Oh, what are donors? Why do bills pass? Oh, I guess they had a debate. Does Israel have power in Congress? No, they don't. You are an anti-Semite. I mean, that's 90% of traditional reporters. They just lie to you like that. Okay, so when we come back from the break, we'll talk a little bit about AOC, talking about how she would crush J.D. Vance in a presidential race between the two of them. Is she thinking about running?

Well, we're going to explore that topic and more when we come back. How does Santa go down? Does he go headfirst? That story made me so bad because, oh, Biden sent another strongly worded letter. I'm a moron. I think that that is really chiding the Israelis. The Israelis will be concerned about that. As a reporter, you don't know that the Israelis don't give a crap, that they laugh at Biden and Trump behind their back and think like, ha ha, losers, suckers, our little bitches, dance for us, dance, bitch. Okay, let's read some comments. No, let's read some comments. No. Do some reporting. If you're a Washington reporter in Washington,

D.C., you should all be deeply embarrassed. Doing propaganda, pretending you're doing marketing, represent the powerful. It's the exact opposite of news. All right, John Wick 1, GM 574 on Super Chat said, Operation Narnia, the genocide, the terrorism, and the propaganda. Make it make sense, 1988, says Anna, true leaders rise not from ambition, but conviction. You fought for the truth from the outside. Now we need your courage on the inside. Please consider running for president. We need your voice. Oh my God. First of all, I'm flattered, but you're crazy. You absolutely crazy. But thank you. That's really sweet. I don't think it's crazy at all. Anyway, free meatballs and Linguini writes in, guys, tell the real story.

Trump wants war with Venezuela because Hugo Chavez rigged the 2020 election. Good one, brother. Good one. Nice job. It's the voting machines. He was controlling it. Yeah. Thank you for making me laugh. James Kelly 9828 says, shout out to TYT for teaching some history I didn't know. That's very nice of you to say that. Scandinavian Alien Dragon says, Membership, $5. Super chat, $5.

Seeing Anna bat her eyes and smile at my comment, priceless. Yes. Thanks for getting me through the hard time CYT team. You guys, too, guys, we're all community here, and we all love you so much. Kelly K writes in, how dare they name their murderous military strength after one of my favorite childhood novels and movies? I know, I know. Narnie, the movie was lit.

Like, I didn't think I was going to like it. watched it when it first came out, the very first one, and it was really, really good. Yeah, yeah. So that was super chat and YouTube members. Now let's go to our members at t-y-t.com. As most prophes, Anna, are you seriously trying to tell us women don't have locker room talk to? Oh, we do. Okay, but like, we don't talk about flossing our teeth with pubic hair. Like, you guys are grody. Like, what's wrong with you? You know what I'm saying? That's not us, but yes, we are often gross. Okay, visionary says, why has so little been directed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago massage parlor with underage girls massaging older

or any men? Some apparently sands their boxers, reefs, or G-strings. It's an interesting point because we don't know what happened at Mar-a-Lago, but we do know there was underage masseuses at Mar-a-lago, which is already problematic. And honestly, I hadn't even connected those dots until you wrote that in. So thank you. See you guys contribute to this show. Benjamin says, it's interesting Jenk hasn't brought up going on CNN a few days ago. Just worried us members will have a go at you. I don't know what I think about it. No, no, no, guys, I just forgot to tell you. Yeah, I went on Alex Michelson's show. So Alex's a good guy and I'm glad he had me on. Anna's going to go on soon. John was on earlier and apparently the embargo is broken to some

degree. So that's good news. All right, back on the online news show, the Young Turks, Jank you, Granada, Kisperin with you. And just a fun comment to start this segment. Akuna Matata, member on t.com, wrote in, is there a color that Anna doesn't look good in? Yes, magenta. Magenta.

Magenta. I bought a magenta blazer. Totally regretted it. And now it's too late. I can't return it. Apparently, I had a very literal answer, but okay. All right, Casper, what's next? We got to talk about what AOC has planned for her political future.

Let's get into it. Do you think that you'll beat that you could beat J.D. Vance in a head-to-head race for president, as polling suggests in 2028? Listen, these polls like three years out are, you know, they are what they are. But let the record show, I would stop him. I would stop him. There you have Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sharing her confidence that she would stomp Vice President J.D. Vance if they were head-to-head in a presidential race in 2028. Jank, your two cents?

Yeah, I think the question here is, is this testing the waters? Of course, I think she should run for something else. I'll tell you what that is. And would she actually beat J.D. Vance? Interesting conversation. Let's talk about it. This really has a lot to do with a poll that recently came out. That was the poll that she was referring to. And I got to say, I am relieved to hear that she doesn't take these polls too seriously, especially with three years out before the election. But with that in mind, AOC would actually beat J.D. Vance.

Not by a wide margin, though, according to a poll that was done by Verasite. So they found that she would beat Vance 51 to 49. But the margin of error is 2.5 percentage points. So it's obviously within the margin of error. Let's take a look at this graphic and I'll explain what you're looking at. So according to the poll, a majority of white voters would support Vance, while a majority of black and Hispanic voters would go for AOC. A majority of voters in the 18 to 29 demographic support AOC.

But every other age demographic is just about even, which I find super-fout. Now, a majority of college-educated voters would support AOC over J.D. Vance. Non-college-educated voters are split down the middle. And unsurprisingly, if you ask me, men would lean toward Vance, whereas women would lean toward AOC. Now, AOC had shared the poll results just yesterday on X, writing simply bloop. And as of producing this story, Vance has yet to respond to the poll at all. So, you know, I don't really know what to make of this. What I do know is I think it would be better suited for her to run for a Senate seat. But I'm curious if you agree with me or you think she should go in a different direction. So when I've read this story, I thought there might be some chance she was testing the waters with that kind of comment, see what kind of reaction she gets after the press runs with it. Because once she says she'd stomp J.D. Vance, everybody's going to write an article about that, right? And then they're going to look at this poll, et cetera, et cetera, right?

And maybe it is. But now that I saw the video, it seemed more playful than that. And so not everything's a political machination. And in terms of should she run, well, look, just think about it strategically for the movement, right? And I don't know that she's going to think about it in terms of the movement or just her own career. That's definitely an open question. But if she runs for president, she'd probably be among a couple of progressives. She's super young.

That doesn't mean she can't win, but it's a lot of risk there. Tons of risk, relatively low probability event, because it's not just going to be automatically her versus Vance. She's going to have to get past 20 Democrats first. It might not necessarily be Vance. I don't think it's going to be, et cetera. Or she could run for the Senate seat in New York against Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer would immediately retire because he doesn't want to get humiliated by losing to AOC.

Nancy Pelosi just retired because she was a tiny bit worried about losing the shortcut Chakrabarki, who was AOC's campaign manager. So I think there's almost no question she would knock out Chuck Schumer by just announcing, right? Then we would have someone that does not take a corporate PAC money and is much closer to our views in a super powerful New York Senate seat. And we would be rid of Chuck Schumer. And that's a near guarantee. So if you're just looking at it from the movement's perspective, she's got to run for the Senate seat.

Please take that sentence seat. It's really important and you do a world of good with it instead of trying for like a 5% 2% thing that might not help at all. I just don't even think that she's in the right moment in her career to run for president. I just think it's premature. And you're right. I think the Senate seat makes a lot more sense. I think that's an area in which you would have a greater impact.

But one thing that I know for sure is that, you know, AOC's commentary or criticism of what's been going down in the Middle East has been very muted. I'm sure people have noticed that. We, in fact, have been mentioning the fact that it's insane that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican. has been far more outspoken against what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the Middle East than AOC has been. And my suspicions were that AOC was kind of keeping her powder dry because she's planning

on running for a higher office. So I think that theory does bear some fruit, regardless of which office she plans on pursuing. But it is kind of sad that in her mind, that's what you need to do to win to basically avoid criticizing Israel too harshly. Yeah. I mean, look, she's not wrong overall strategically throughout our lifetimes. She might be wrong today strategically, but more importantly, do you have convictions? Look, she's closer to our positions on policy, so that's why I'd be thrilled if she had the New York Senate seat. But is she purposely not criticizing Israel much and avoiding other economic issues that would aggravate the establishment so that she could have

more positive media coverage, I think almost definitely. I mean, there's no excuse for getting outflanked on the left by Marjorie Taylor Green on Israel. So again, other people who do like kind of fights against the Republicans like Jasmine Crockett, all of these guys won't touch Israel because they know the minute you touch Israel, all of the massive positive media coverage you're getting turns instantly super negative, right? True. And that's usually a death knell for your career in Washington, although these days, I think they're miscalculating. I agree, I agree.

I mean, look at Zeran Mamdani. The attacks against him simply because he initially refused to condemn others saying globalized the intifada. and he said that he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if you ever stepped foot in New York City. That led to a lot of backlash in the media and honestly it only helped him. So look, it could be a miscalculation.

We're going to have to wait and see. But I also think that she needs to give herself time like for her political career to mature so she can hang her hat on things she has accomplished. You get what I'm saying? Like, what is she going to run on if she runs for president? Yeah, I mean, look, I'll say one last thing. It's not because I like him.

I've also had huge disagreements with him. He's going to be on the show later tonight, Roe Kana, right? But what's the difference between Roe and AOC in that context? Not that Roe is older. It's that Roe has introduced dozens and dozens of bills that are really that that fight for our positions that focus on economic populism. He finds allies, finds ways to win, whether it's Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green on the Epstein files, a stunning victory on that.

Why? Because he had the courage to try, right? And if being honest, and that's what we do here, and I'm sure to aggravate some, including AOC, and she'll never come on the show, blah, blah, I don't care. My job is to be honest with you guys. Has she shown courage on the Gaza issue? Absolutely not. No, she's shown almost no courage on it. And I can't have it. I wouldn't support someone that that doesn't show the bare minimum courage on an issue of morality of that degree. All right. I think I want to take our final break because this next story is a controversial one. A lot of people are debating about it online and it has to do with discrimination against white men. Is that in fact happening? That was the question posed by a new piece in Compact magazine.

We're going to discuss it and more when we come back. How does Santa go down? Does Santa ever get stuck partway down and need one of the reindeer? All right, back on TYT. Guys, I'm going to read you this comment and I love it so much from Super Chat, but I love it mainly because of the thing that we care most about, honesty, right? So listen to this. Joe Blue 3769 says, I started watching TYT because Anna's a total smoke show. Okay, but hold on, hold on, and I stayed for the truth.

Thank you, both of you guys, show me that there's still some good in the world. I'm a registered Republican, but I identify as a young Turk. Damn right. That's right. That's great. That's great. I love that. The only way that comment is better is if it's from a woman and calls me a smoke show.

Only other way. Okay, but other than that, it's perfect. Okay. And way to have an open mind, brother. I love this community of open minds and definitely open hearts. So now let's go to t.com members, don't shoot on the goalkeeper says nobody likes J.D. Vance. Megan doesn't even like him. Yeah, they're very mixed on him. I wouldn't say they don't like them. Some people do, some people don't. I don't, I've never seen anybody get as mixed a reaction as J.D. Vance.

Don Dada Dragon says, if AOC did what Roe was doing, she'd be our champion. Definitely. Like she had it. She was supposed to be our champion. And then she kind of dropped the ball because she didn't want the media to yell at her. She really, really hated when the media criticized her. And it bothered her to know. And so she just stopped doing everything that the media would criticize. But that's kind of everything in terms of actually challenging power. It's not only that, though.

The media criticizing you is bad enough, right? And a lot of people would cave to that. But it's also coming into work knowing your colleagues don't like you. And that was what her initially what her experience in Congress was like. And yeah, that's a really difficult thing to deal with. I would know. Yeah, no, no, seriously, like I get it, guys. I know that we're being a little harsh.

I know how hard it is to go in and have everyone in the building say you're the bad guy. And that's why a lot of them go in good people, really good people, and they melt under that pressure. And it's no human and 98% of people do it, but we're looking for the 2% who don't melt. Sorry, that's what we need in a leader, in a leader by definition, okay? Bloated ego says if any candidate for president or any other office had the Cajonis to tell Bibi to F off mean it and could stand up to the pressure, he or she would probably be win their election hands down. Yeah, they would. Isn't it amazing? A, that 98% of politicians still don't understand that, that they're so clueless, so detached from what's happening with

the voters, that they don't know that at all. But for the ones that do know it, they would still never do it. They're so deathly afraid of the Israeli lobby, because it's not just the lobby, guys, it's the media. The media will then come crashing down on you. Since Roe had the courage to say we should stop funding Israel and we should recognize Palestine as a state, He's the one that's passing around the letter to recognize Palestine. Oh, he's been called an anti-Semite a thousand times. That takes courage. We'll be back.

I'm working like my ass. I know. He's messed up. All right, back on TYT, Jane and Anna with you guys, but also Dimitj Doe. Thanks for joining. We appreciate it. Great to have you with us during the holidays. Hit that beautiful join button or t.com slash join. Anna, what's next? Well, we got to talk about a controversial piece that was just published about discrimination. And it's controversial because of the group that's being discriminated against, allegedly.

So let's get to the details. A controversial new piece in Compact Magazine written by Jacob Savage makes the claim that beginning in 2014, classically liberal American institutions intentionally avoided hiring white men. In fact, the piece claims that some institutions even admitted that they were outright discriminating against white men. So the piece is called Lost Generation. And before we get to the details and the arguments that are made within the piece, Jank, your two cents? Well, so there's a theory that white people or males or whoever's in the majority

cannot be discriminated against. That theory is false. So were there good reasons to discriminate against white men and did that discrimination happen? Well, let's find out first and then we'll discuss. So the piece alleges that for about a decade, young white men have been system. shut out of various institutions, including journalism, academia, and even Hollywood. Now, bear with us while we present the receipts that were provided in the piece. It's not like it was just, you know, a big ranting article with no actual evidence.

And honestly, some of this evidence is, is pretty damning. So Savage argues that, you know, DEI initiatives disproportionately hurt young white men who were trying to start their professional lives. So here's some data to prove it and keep in mind that the white men represent about 30% of the American population. 30%. Okay. So in 2011, white men were 48% of lower level TV writers, obviously overrepresented, but nonetheless, 48% of lower level TV writers. But by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9%. So you can see the same pattern playing out at America's top universities. So white men fell from 39% of tenure track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014

to just 18% in 2023. At Berkeley, as recently as 2015, white male hires were 52.7% of new tenure track faculty. In 2023, they were 21.5%. So of the 59 assistant professors in arts, humanities, and social science appointed at UC Santa Cruz between 2020 and 2024, only two were white men, 3%. And the same thing is playing out in the field of journalism as well. So since 2020, nearly two-thirds of the Atlantic's hires have been women, along with nearly 50% people of color, In 2018, the New York Times replaced its summer internship with a year-long fellowship. Just 10% of the nearly 220 fellows have been white men. So one factor that I want a little more clarity on is, look, men in general, have been falling

behind in the country. So if you look at graduation rates at the top universities, period, you know, women are earning degrees at a higher rate than men? Is that possibly a factor that plays a role in what's happening? Could be. But that doesn't account for the fact that some of these institutions are just outright saying, yeah, we're not hiring young white men. And that's, that is discriminatory. And I think that's an overcorrection of what, you know, used to be a problem where other people were discriminated against and white men were hired over women or people of color. So I do think this is an issue. And what I worry about, and I think we do see it to some extent, Jank, is

backlash and resentment and anger. And I don't want that to happen. And I don't want anyone to be discriminated against. I want to live in a meritocracy. We don't. I want to be clear about that. And that has less to do with race and more to do with connections and how affluent a person's family happens to be. But at the same time, you know, race-based hiring or gender-based hiring can be an issue, especially if there's outright discrimination taking place. Yeah. So I think for this story, context is everything. So, for example, you could look at older Young Turks videos, and we've been around 20 years now. about to celebrate our 20th anniversary on YouTube and say, wait a minute, Janky, I remember you guys saying that, oh, boo-hoo white men, you just don't have enough power. You guys are complaining for no reason. Yeah, we might have said that in 2011, for example, when, just take one of these

stats here, I could use two of them, when 48% of the TV writers were white males. That's already disproportionately high. So what is the percentage of white males in the country? Very important to know so you can level set here, 31%. So back in 2011, they were way overrepresented in Berkeley professors at 52%, TV writers at 48%, etc. Now, at some point, it started to get to a point where there was a balancing out, and now the pendulum has swung the other way. And some folks on the left will say, no, you know, you can't discriminate. There is no racism against white people because they're in power. Well, unless they're not in power, because, yeah, they might be power in the government and in many other contexts, but maybe they're not in power at Berkeley

or at the Atlantic or in other institutions. And now, when you look at the numbers today, TV writers, they're down to 12%. Well, that's nowhere near 31%. At Berkeley, they're down to 21 and a half percent, et cetera. Now, do you have to hit 31% exactly? No, that was, ironically be a quota, right? And what should, what's the system you should use to hire people? I'd like to think it's the system we use, which is, I don't give a damn. I don't care if you're white, black, Asian, old, young men. I don't care. And what kind of staff do we have? We have an incredibly diverse staff because we hired the best people we could, right? And so to me, that's inarguably the right system, especially after you've gotten past the original problem.

The original problem was white males had all of the positions. So I interviewed Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, and I don't agree with him on a million things, but I wanted to hear his perspective. And he became a right winger because in his perspective, his mind, his way of viewing it, he had been denied several promotions, and his bosses had told him, it's because you're a white man and we have too many white men in management positions. And that made him super angry and bitter and let him in a right wing direction. I remember, sorry, go ahead, Jake. Finish your thought. Yeah, when you do that, when you're trying to introduce African Americans and women into the workforce at all, into management at all, yeah, I can see why Scott Adams would be mad. But then how about

all the black people who never got a chance? They're also mad, right? Exactly. And, They need to get a chance to do that. But now, when we have this level of data on how white men are now disfavored, young white men from getting hired, in my opinion, the pendulum has begun to swing too far. And what does that lead to? It leads to not a little discontent and not just the right wing. It leads to much larger discontent and risking the pendulum swinging back. Yeah, and the resentment I don't think is healthy for any society, right?

And I think all of us have, not all of us, but many people have similar stories to what Scott Adams' experience. Like I remember, I was so irritated by this, this is many years ago. I think it was 2012, but I flew out to New York City to take a meeting with the executive producer of The View. And I'm just going to be honest with you guys, I wasn't even really that interested in being a host. on the view, but I'm like, wow, they want to meet with me. Sure, why not? We'll go all the way across the country to New York City to have this meeting. It was a great meeting, loved me, but it ended with, you're great. You'd be great for the show. It's just that we're looking for a Latina, right? And I'm just like, okay. And I just remember thinking to myself at that moment, I think that's

discrimination, but like, who am I to make a big deal about it? Like, I'm happy with what I'm doing for work already. I don't really want to move to New York City to do this job anyway. So I had to make a big stink about it. But I can totally understand others being infuriated by that because it's supposed to be based on the merit of your accomplishments, your work, all of that. Again, we all know that the real world doesn't actually work that way. But the other thing that I'll mention, aside from the personal anecdotes of outright discrimination, some of these organizations are just admitting that they're engaging in discrimination. So a man by the name of James, oh, sorry, so an anonymous senior hiring editor at a major outlet told Savage for this piece,

for a typical job, we'd get a couple hundred applications, probably at least 80 from white guys. It was a given that we weren't going to hire the best person. It was charing how we would talk about excluding white guys. That's not good. Okay, that's, that is discrimination. And that is what we're trying to move away from. Like, it shouldn't be seen as you either discriminate against people of color or white people. How about we just don't discriminate? We don't bake in discriminatory policies at the workplace. A man by the name of James stated that over the years at a top classics program,

he watched underqualified candidates get tenure track offers because they checked certain identity boxes. My own advisors would say, very openly, they're just two completely different hiring schemes. There's just two completely different categories of person. Meanwhile, over in Hollywood studios and talent agencies were racing to fill quotas. So a whistleblower sent me a document from early 2017 across the grid, which tracks staffing needs for TV writers' rooms. The same shorthand appears dozens of times. diverse, female, women, and diverse only. And Savage also writes that this was systematic discrimination,

documented in writing, implemented without consequence. It's striking how casual it all was. Chicago Fire, the upper level can be anyone, but we need diverse staff writers. So, yeah, it's just, you know, I think it's easy to kind of brush this piece off as like, oh, poor white men, you know. But the receipts do lead to a pretty compelling argument here. And I'm just against discrimination of all forms.

You know, I just don't think it's helpful. So like in the case of Anna, we didn't never talked about it on air. We didn't make a big deal out of it. In fact, we're not a big deal. We made no deal out of it. And partly because like TV is a little bit of a different animal too. Like if you want to be able to represent your viewers and. Like, it's just a different formula.

For example, in cities that are heavily African-American, you'll have more African-American local TV anchors. In cities that have more of an Asian population, you'll see more Asian anchors. I don't think that's the worst thing in the world, right? I get what they're trying to do. So it's a little bit different. On the other hand, if you're a doctor or you're a writer, I don't know that we need that kind of diversity, you know, as part of the job.

But we still don't do it, and we have enormous diversity. We just hired the best people. But guys, in the beginning, you needed affirmative action. Otherwise, nobody could break in. But if you continue affirmative action forever, number one, it eventually leads to the pendulum swing so much that you have reverse discrimination, which is what we're seeing here. That leads to huge resentment throughout the country.

And by the way, white folks, if you're resentful about this, can you now empathize with black folks and women and other minorities who felt just as resoundful earlier when they weren't allowed into these careers, right? Yeah, that's a great point. That's such a great point. And I want to end on this because I think this was a thought-provoking excerpt from Savage's piece. He writes, if you were 40 in 2014, born in 1974, beginning your career in the late 90s, you were already established. If you were 30 in 2014, you hit the wall. Because the mandates to diversify didn't fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power. They landed on us. Yeah. To that point, last couple points, what percentage of people in Congress are white males?

65%. So the older category is still stacked with white males in power. We argue for balance, and that's a tough position because people say, are you on the left or are you on the right? You have to be white or black, this, that. No, balance. That's the same. sensible thing to do. And finally, guys, at some point, we've got to be one nation. If we're not one nation and we're just a group of different individuals that happen to live next to each other, it's not going to end well. I agree. All right, one more story before we end the show, because this is a big one. I'm going to skip the cold open and just go straight to it. So Donald Trump just fulfilled one of his campaign promises and has the opportunity to possibly

gain some popularity by officially signing an executive order, reclassifying Merrill. But how far does his executive order go? And will it be enough? Well, we'll get into it in just a moment. But Jank, first, your two cents? Yeah, so it's obviously done to gain political favor. But ironically, it might be a little too late because his base is turning on this. But this is the kind of things that they promise, but they're so laid on. So I'll believe it when I see it. So as we all know, or maybe you don't know, so I'll tell you, cannabis has been classified as a Schedule 1 drug, which is the same category as actual hard drugs like heroin, LSD. And with this executive order, it will now be reclassified as a Schedule 3 drug, which includes

drugs like anabolic steroids or ketamine. Ketamine's a pretty serious drug. I feel like, anyway, whatever. Let's hear more from Trump, who explained his reasoning behind this reclassification. For decades, this action has been requested by American patients suffering from. extreme pain, incurable diseases, aggressive cancers, seizure disorders, neurological problems, and more, including numerous veterans with service-related injuries and older Americans who live with chronic medical problems that severely degrade their quality of life.

This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers, and future treatments. It's going to have a tremendously positive impact, I believe. So I should note that while this is a good step, in my opinion, I don't think that it should be considered one of the most damaging drugs. And there is absolutely a medicinal benefit to marijuana. I would know my mom just underwent treatments for cancer. According to CNN, this reclassification isn't really the end-all be-all.

So for instance, the executive order will not make cannabis legal on a federal level. It also doesn't affect recreational marijuana, nor does it include any criminal justice changes. So remember, there are people in prison on marijuana-related crimes even today, and this isn't going to expunge anyone's record or anything like that. And this might be a move to increase his popularity with Americans. the majority of Americans do want to see marijuana decriminalized in the very least. There are a few on the right, though, who are against this. Sagar and Jetty is one of them.

He says marijuana mass normalization has been a disaster for the United States. Our city stink. I personally like the smell. Our kids are literally being poisoned and made stupid. DWIs are skyrocketing. And the promised revenue doesn't even come close to making up the mass social chaos. I think he's exaggerating a little bit to be quite frank, but I do agree in that there needs to be better regulations around marijuana. I think simply decriminalizing it and not engaging in

the proper regulations so people don't smoke and drive under the influence. That is an issue. So he's right about that. But when pressed on the fact that reclassification would allow for more research, he says nobody needs to study weed. So, yeah, no, Cyra's totally wrong. So two thirds of the country wants marijuana legalized. These super old politicians every once in a while when they get into trouble are like, well, well, maybe we'll move a couple of inches on marijuana. And Biden promised this in his third year. Did he do it? Of course not.

He's a giant liar. He never did anything he said. And they're all totally clueless and out of touch. Now Trump finally moved the classification. So will I take the win even though it's for optics? and gimmicks and stuff, yeah, it wins a win. I'll take it, right? And I'll give Trump a little bit of credit for doing that. But is it to end all beyond? No. I, this was an issue we cared about, and I talked to activists that are adamant about this issue. And they say moving it to

schedule three barely affects anything. You really have to decriminalize it, not necessarily legalize it. There's a difference between the two. And so I'm for that. I know the right wing now talk across many others are now against marijuana legalization. I massively disagree. It's a question of freedom. If you don't want to smoke marijuana, then don't smoke it. If I want to smoke it, I'll smoke it. And if you don't like it, you can kiss my ass and you can go to a repressive country. I'm not interested in that. So I disagree with them, but there's nothing wrong with that. So this might help Trump a little bit, but ironically, not as much as he thinks because his base is starting to shift on it. All right, the revolution is next. Stick around.

With Rokana, make sure you stick around. We're going to be able to be. Thank you. You know, Thank you. You're going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. All right, welcome back to TYT.

We've got a great guest for you guys now. Representative Roe Kahn has joined us. He has been at the forefront of a lot of issues, including the Epstein files. Representative Kana, welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. All right, Ro, I'm going to start with showing a video of you from today, I believe, threatening serious consequences for folks if they don't release

the files, and then we'll come back and talk about it. Let's run that video. Tomorrow at midnight is the deadline for Pam Bondi to release the Epstein files. Here is the reality. Any Justice Department official who does not comply with this law will be subject to prosecution for obstruction of justice. If Pam Bondi does not comply with the law, she will be held either an inherent contempt of Congress or subject to impeachment. We will not rest until the law is complied with and justice is served. So Representative Kana, is that realistic? Can she really be prosecuted if she does not release the files by tomorrow? Yes, when we have a future Democratic administration, yes. I mean, look,

there's some people who think let's just have kumbaya when we, and we, and we, and, you know, have a Democrat in the future. I believe we need accountability. I believe people who committed crimes should be held accountable, not just if someone violates the Epstein Act, but if they bombed people off the, in the Caribbean, who are innocent. I mean, we need to have accountability.

If they gave orders to ICE where people were detaining American citizens or committing criminal acts, we need accountability. And she is subject to obstruction of justice. But the reason I gave that speech today is there are, As we speak today, Jang, dozens of lawyers from the national security team at DOJ going through the Epstein files. They're doing that now. We know that from reporting.

And they're planning on releasing things tomorrow. And what I wanted to signal to them is they better be doing this in compliance with the law or they're subject to future prosecution. So when we talk about prosecution, we're not talking about tomorrow because the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House. So it's, Pam Bondi's not going to arrest herself as the attorney general. Would consequences begin if the Democrats take the House in 2026? Well, they could begin before that. I mean, Massey and I have talked about introducing an impeachment resolution against a Pam Bondi where we could get Republicans breaking and supporting that if the release of the files is not in compliance with the law.

you already have Susie Wiles throwing her under the bus. The White House Chief of Staff saying she whiffed. So she is losing support among the Republican caucus. Second, she could be held in inherent contempt to Congress. That means the sergeant of arms of Congress could actually arrest her. And there could be a trial in Congress about whether she was transparent. And we are pursuing a number of those things. Obviously, the Democrats take back Congress would be easier.

But you actually have Republicans in MAGA willing to hold her accountable. Well, that would be a hell of a thing if the sergeant at arms of the house arrested the attorney general and put her on trial in the house, that would be epic and historic and unprecedented. But you mentioned Tom Massey. He also had something to say about this issue. Let's listen to that and get your reaction. How will you know if they've released all the materials? The victim's lawyers have been in contact with me and collectively they know there are at least 20 names. of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI. These would reside in the F.D. 302 forms. So if we get a large production on December 19th, and it does not contain a single name of any male who's accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven't produced all the documents. It's that simple.

So Representative Conlon, this is the second issue. So there's the issue of what if they don't turn them over, which is what we just discussed. But what if they turn them over and they don't really have the materials they're supposed to have in there? At that point, what can you guys do? Well, first of all, for what Thomas Massey said is we will know if that's the case because there are lawyers of the survivors who've seen the files. They would say there's stuff in there that they haven't gotten out. Second, we would call the survivors back to the Capitol. I mean, they've had to come twice to have them tell the story about what things are still out there

and have the survivors' lawyers say what needs to be still out there. After that, look, the same remedies apply. You could have any citizen actually withstanding a sue the Justice Department. That could be survivors. That could be journalists suing for the release of documents. Those people would still be not in compliance with the law, so they could be subject to future. prosecution if it was done willfully in terms of concealment. And the impeachment and inherent contempt remain on the table.

The difference between Massey and me and some others in Congress is we are willing to use the full legislative powers to seek justice. Others are very polite. They don't want to rock the boat. They don't talk about inherent contempt, impeachment, having survivors come to the Capitol, suing the Justice Department if it needs to be. But we want justice for these survivors. We want the law upheld. And we are showing that Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress doesn't have to be toothless. We don't have to be supine to Donald Trump.

We can stand up and assert our power. Yeah, so I wanna talk about why there's, it appears to be only three members of Congress right now, but out of 535 or 435 in the House. But I'm gonna come back to that in a second. So Massey there talked about 20 people, that we, that apparently the victims know committed sex crimes, right? Now earlier in this administration, Pam Bondi, the Justice Department, put out a statement saying that there

were no, but there was no one they were going to prosecute, there was no one who did anything else wrong. They already said that. So they'd have to now say we were lying or we were mistaken and here are the 20 people who should be charged. I would be a little shocked if they said that. But it's obvious that they're covering things up. I mean, everybody knows this now. This is not even debated anymore. The right wing agrees with the left wing and the middle wing and every other kind of wing that they're obviously covering this up. So I don't think that there are individuals that are powerful enough, no matter how wealthy they are, that that could get the entire United States government, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, no matter

who's president to bury this thing. So do you have a theory on who would be powerful enough to have kept all of this hidden for about two decades? No, I mean, the release of the files may help us figure that out. But look, there were a lot of rich and powerful people who were involved. I mean, people who somehow got Jeffrey Epstein, a former school teacher, to be worth $500 million. Not $500 million in today's money, but $500 million back in the 1990s and 2000s. Well, that would be the equivalent of being worth billions of dollars today. There is people who were at these parties who included billionaires and senior journalists and is senior government official. So he had a network of very, very powerful people.

And I guess one of the things we need to know is what were his motives. I don't buy that it was just some child abuser, a rapist, pervert, and he had the world's elite at his fingertips. There was something more sinister going on, and that's what I want to understand. Yeah, I mean, this is potentially a tough question for you. It's not tough for me, but I understand people in Congress and official positions, obviously have to be a little bit more careful with their speculation than me. But I mean, drop site news has already uncovered that he, in his emails, he constantly talked about Israel. He had Ahud Barak's over at his house 30 times, a former prime minister. He had Israeli spies at his house. He was trying to get America to bomb Syria and Iran. He

arranged, I mean, he was so powerful that Ahud Barak could not get a meeting with Vladimir Putin, but Epstein got that meeting for him. I mean, that is an enormous amount of power. So will anyone ever look into whether it was an intelligence agency that did this? Our release calls for documents that get to some of the intelligence and FBI interviews. And so, you know, I have refused to speculate because it would be irresponsible for me as the law's author to do that. I don't want to be accused of bias. I, my interest is transparency. but the law is drafted in a way that those documents should come out.

And if there is something that is particularly sensitive to our national security, then they need to explain what they're withholding and why they're withholding it. So, you know, we'll have a much better sense of how much information we're going to get and how much we're going to figure out tomorrow by midnight. Yeah, and guys, pay attention to what Representative Kana said there. Because if they say in some of the releases that they're not releasing some things because of national security matters, well, that's almost a confession. So that would be a huge thing to note in the records. So let's see what happens. Okay, now to the political side of this, Representative Kahn, we now have a political

spectrum that is all jumbled, right? We've got you and Tom Massey and then later Marjorie Taylor Green working super effectively. Almost the three of you, I don't know if you want to give credit to others that were part of it at some point. But certainly in the beginning, you and Massey started this seem to have swung the entire Congress and Trump just because you tried. But that leads me to ask the question, why don't other Republicans and Democrats ever try? Well, it looks like we've started a trend. You now have 50, 60 discharge petitions. So I think we've woken up Congress. Discharge petitions on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, discharge petitions on banning stock trading, discharge petitions on standing up for workers' rights. I mean, literally, everyone has suddenly said, oh, okay, we don't have to just sit here and listen to the president and Mike Johnson dictate what we do. We were actually elected to represent. people and to be an independent governing body. And so Massey and I did something that has literally changed Congress.

I mean, changed Congress not just in terms of dismantling MAGA and standing up to Trump. I think it's changed Congress forever. I think you've now got ordinary members of unafraid of leadership. Do you think the political spectrum is getting jumbled so that, you know, sometimes your most effective partners are Republican-like Massey, because of the funding, whether you're on the right or the left, if you don't take corporate PAC money or foreign government money, that frees you up to actually represent the voters?

I think there are unusual alliances that are being formed. I mean, certainly on matters of war and peace, Thomas Massey and I are strongly aligned, for example, against the bombing in the Caribbean and against a regime change war in Venezuela. And there we have more in common than some of the people I serve on her Democrats on the Armed Services Committee. And so the reality is that when it comes to ending endless wars, when it comes to standing up against PAC money and lobbyist money, when it comes to reforming some of the corruption in government, you can have the left and the right stand up against the status quo that has failed people. And when it comes to more competition within our parties, calling out the old guard saying you need primary challenges in terms of there, nothing is wrong with that. All of that is a sense of, I would say, populist energy, people feeling that their political and economic voice has been stolen, that they want to take back control of government. And that is a populism on both the left and the right. Now, I think the democratic populism isn't just for tax breaks for the billionaires. And it's for

Medicare for all and $10 a day childcare and stopping Wall Street from buying single family homes and is more aspirational. But there is a populism on both sides. Yeah. And so I'll give an example to the audience. Representative Kana has a bipartisan bill to lower drug prices. He just took Trump's executive order on most favored nation status and turned it into a bill. And on this very show, viewers suggested I reach out to Marjorie Taylor Green to co-sponsor that. I did, and she did co-sponsor it. So now we're, now we're having agreement on lowering drug prices. We're way past foreign policy now. We're getting to core agreements on economic issues among populists. It's, it's just remarkable. It's, I've never

seen it in 30 years of covering politics. I'm going to ask you that your question that it's hard for you to answer because you're not in this group, but, but when they, when other Democrats see you doing this incredible work on the Epstein files as an example. I don't get it. Why don't they come and join you? I mean, just as a matter of political calculation, even if they didn't mean it, it's kind of a layup. Why aren't more people taking that layout? Well, they have. They did come around. I mean, that's how we got 212 House members on it. Every member of the caucus. Now we've got the oversight committee leading on it. And now everyone recognizes that this actually broke the MAGA coalition.

This was the one issue where Trump was not able to get his own members to fall into line. Seventy Republicans were willing to vote for my bill in defiance of Donald Trump, so much so that Donald Trump went for calling what I was doing a hoax to two days later endorsing and signing my bill. I wasn't invited to the bill signing, but that we showed what is possible. And so I don't want to be a lone ranger. What I've hoped is that this is inspiring Democrats to be more creative, to be more bold. And I think it is. If you look at the number of discharge petitions, it's almost 50 times what we usually have. And so, you know, with the history of this time is written, of course, it will start with justice for survivors.

But it'll also start with how Massey and I not only may have ended the high watermark of Trump's presidency and ushered in an era of him being the beginning of his lame duck presidency, but may have also re-energize the sense of Congress, a more of an institution that it lost its way, suddenly now waking up and saying, yeah, we want to vote on war powers. We want to vote on government reform and finding its voice again. Uh-oh. I just came up with a nickname for you. The Roe Ranger. Okay, so we'll see if that one sticks.

I don't know. All right, back to serious stuff. So you've also broken another taboo in Congress, which is one that frustrated me for, again, of 30 years. I didn't understand why you can't challenge leadership. That's why can't we have a debate within our own party? What kind of democracy are we running? So you've called for Chuck Schumer to step down. In the past, that would have been considered heresy of the highest order.

How has it been received now? You know, I have got to tell you, I've gotten 80, 90% praise for that. If I had one very senior person in the party said, you know, anyone who wants to lead this party in the future, well, they're all going to come around to your position. You got to run against this old guard in the party and you just got there first. It's mind-boggling to me because it was very different when I endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, when I co-chaired Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2020. Then I was seen as a pariah ostracized. Now I think people are saying, you know what, that kind of guy, he's actually right. I mean, we need to be different.

We can't just run the status quo. We need new leadership. We need to understand that we need a more populist message. We can't just be a status quo corporate Democrats. Like that is becoming the consensus. It's almost scary in the party, which gives me great hope that we're going to have new, bold members of Congress, senators, presidents that actually can redeem our FDR, William Jennings Bryan tradition of being a party that stands up for working class folks, middle class folks,

makes life better, doesn't get us into endless wars, isn't corrupt, restores the American dream. Yeah, well, that leads us back to the DNC, where I've got more bad news though. So first, I talked to several people that were previous, privy to the strategy at the DNC. I don't want to overhype it. It's just people that I talk to that know it to some degree. And when I asked them, what's the new democratic strategy for 2026? They said, oppose Trump.

That's not new at all. Trump being a bad guy is what they've run on for 10 straight years. Is that wrong? Is there a different democratic strategy that leadership is talking? about that we just don't know about, or are they really going to go back to that same well again? Well, I do think affordability has become part of the mantra. Now, we need to have concrete policies on it, and whether that's breaking up monopolies with meatpackers, whether it's figuring out how not to have food towers, whether it's making sure data centers are paying for their electricity

and so sticking local communities with bills, Medicare for all, child care, $10 a day. You know, you need real substance behind affordability. But I do think that there is that positive agenda. The other thing is, you know, when you're the party out of power, the anti-Trump stuff actually works because Trump is so awful in terms of what he's doing to families and his irrationality on the economy. The problem becomes if you just run on that, then you can't really build a governing majority and you're going to lose power, even if you get it for two years. And so my hope is that

we realize that we've got to really have a bold populist agenda that things like paid family leave, things like a living wage, things like Medicare for all, things like $10 a day child care, a tax on billionaires that can give us a runway. So it's not just, okay, we didn't like what Trump's doing. We'll give these Democrats a shot. And then, oh, gosh. They're not making our life better. And then you get the rise of a virulent Republican comeback. It's just not sustainable. Yeah, I mean, I feel like Democratic leadership just doesn't listen.

Like, we all know Trump is bad. That's not the point. We're not disagreeing with that. What we're saying is you need to also have a positive agenda that people are excited about because it affects their lives, right? That's the most important part. But that leads me to the second question. So the DNC apparently did an autopsy for what went wrong in 2024, and today they announced that they're going to bury it and they're not going to publish it, talk about it, et cetera, because they're quote unquote winning already in their minds.

Now, at the same time, there's a poll out right now saying Democratic approval rating for the party overall is at negative 55. So I just don't get it. And you're closer to that bubble than I am. So does Democratic leadership think they nailed this and that the country now loves Democrats? Do they not understand, yeah, people are disgruntled with Trump, but they're also disgruntled with Democrats and you need to figure out not just what went wrong, but what's still wrong today at a negative 55 approval rating. Look, obviously we need to figure out one wrong. But the reason I'm not all that worked up about the DNC report and they should release it is just I don't think we're going to get there by talking to the consultants that they talk to anyway. I think we'd be better spent talking to people like you, people in the communities, podcasters, folks who are grassroots organizers.

So do I really want to read a report that a bunch of Democratic consultants who run these campaigns in the past that said was a problem? Probably not. I mean, fine, release it, but that's not where the new strategy or energy is going to come from. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, I don't know a category of professionals that have been bigger failures, unfortunately, than Democratic consultants. So you also, I mean, you're so active, it's hard to get all the things you've done in an half an hour interview. But you've also spearheaded an effort to try to get people to recognize Palestine as a state, get America to recognize Palestine as a state. So I'll ask this broadly. How has that been received? Not well, but better than it would have years passed. Look, the Democratic Party has a question that we have to ask is, are we going to be the status quo policy party when it comes to

the Middle East or are we going to listen to our base and say that we should not be giving military sales to Netanyahu to kill civilians in Gaza? That's Delia Ramirez's No Bombs Act that I've co-sponsored. That we should recognize as the UN has that what took place by the Israeli government was a genocide. And that is Rashida Talib's bill, which has 21 co-sponsors, including me. And that we should recognize a Palestinian state to live side by side with a secure Israel. And I led that effort. And my view is those are the three building blocks that many Democrats support. The irony is all the big names in our party don't support most of those three building blocks. And there's never been a bigger disconnect between our leadership of our party, the faces of the party and the grassroots.

And of course, it's a matter of principle for me. I said where I stand and I think it's going to be an issue that people care about in these Democratic primaries. So well over 90% of Democratic voters want to recognize Palestine as a state. It's not a controversial position. It's only controversial in Washington. So how many people have signed it on to that? Is it a bill or a letter? It was a letter and it was during the time of the UN. It got about 40 some signatures, which was significant at the time.

Now because it's not an ongoing bill, we can't keep working on it. But I think the more accurate numbers are 58 on Delia Ramirez's No Bombs Act. So it's still about only a fourth of the caucus and only 21 on Rashida Talib, which is no recognizing what the UN has that what the Israeli government committed a genocide. And my doing that with Rashida Talib had APEC start spending in my district against me to try to hurt me in my district. So, you know, I've taken positions on both the Epstein files that I knew would upset certain people in our party and powerful interests. And certainly I've done that on Gaza. Recently, I've done that in standing up to some of the tech barons in my district on AI saying, no, you can't just go build data centers wherever you want and stick people with a bill.

And I had tweeted out that I stand with Bernie Sanders over Elon Musk and making sure that this AI revolution works for workers and doesn't just eliminate jobs. And so, you know, I have a fair amount of people who are opposed to me who don't like the grassroots coalition that I'm building. But at the same time, it's earned me, I think, what is the most important, perhaps quality today in politics, which is some trust, not a lot of trust, but some trust, because you're a politician still, some trust from people saying, okay, maybe this guy is actually going to do the right thing. Maybe he's actually going to take some stands and risk his own career for fighting for what's right. And I really think that that is the most precious commodity right now. for anyone in public life. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And their trust comes from challenging power when it's difficult, not joining later and when the bandwagon is already formed. And you've done that consistently here.

So, but I want to go back to the letter for a second because, look, cutting funding to Israel, I think is obvious, but I understand the pressures. I understand that let's keep it real, the money. 94% of Congress has gotten money from APEC, rose among the 6% that hasn't, APEC or the Israeli lobby. I understand the media pressures, et cetera. And calling it a genocide. Again, it's a layup. Everyone agrees, but in Washington, it's a completely different bubble.

But when it comes to recognizing Palestine as a state, I don't understand what the objection even is. So is three quarters of the Democratic caucus saying that the Palestinians shouldn't be allowed to exist as a state? I mean, that's brutal and vicious and crazy. Yeah, I mean, they would say, well, it has to be conditional on first Hamas not being there and conditional on them not having a government. I said, you know, the letter clearly says a Palestinian state without Hamas that has Democratic alleged. But you have to recognize the possibility of a Palestinian state to be able to effectuate elections and get a Palestinian authority that is actually going to sit down and do that, as opposed to saying, well, we aren't going to even recognize it until Hamas is totally eliminated. I mean, the way you get Hamas out is by working towards a two-state solution. So this is why the Palestinians and many people in the Arab world have not believed us because we say two states.

But when it comes to the simplest thing to actually show that that's a reality, recognizing a Palestinian state, we say no. In fact, we have a law signed by Congress in 1990 that says if the United States were to recognize a Palestinian state in the United Nations, our funding to the United Nations would automatically be cut off. So to do that in the United Nations now, we would have to actually overturn a congressional law that says that the U.S. cannot fund a UN that recognizes a Palestinian state. It's just insanity. I mean, it's like during apartheid if they said, no, no, no, we're not going to let these black people go until they meet all the conditions that the Afrikaners demand of the blacks. Otherwise, the blacks are too dangerous and should never be allowed to rule themselves. I mean, that's literally what's happening here. But because this beloved Israel,

the rest of Washington bows down. But Roe doesn't, and that's courage, and that makes a difference, and that's what builds trust. So last thing, Roe, when it comes to the media, you know, you do this APAC attacks you, you know, viciously as they always do. They're always at an 11, right? And they call everyone in the country. I think at this point they've called 99% of the country, anti-Semites.

But has that had an effect in media coverage? I am genuine question. I don't know the answer to that because usually when APEC and the others do that, the media then piles on top of you, but you know, you've got a lot of credibility in D.C., so it might not have happened. So how's the media reacted to that? A few of our articles in several outlets like Jewish insider and Jewish news sensationalize some of it. But even they have been fair when I've pushed back on it.

And I guess, one, the climate has changed. So people saw with their own eyes what happened in Gaza and that just affected people. People heard Smokritch and Ben-Gabir say starve them, that that's the strategy to surrender, right? I mean, so I think that the American people have just shifted in a deep way on that. But the second thing is I do believe I have some credibility, having served in the Obama administration, having taught economics, having worked in technology and innovation. It's just harder to paint me as outside the American mainstream. And so, you know, what I benefit from is that while I have bold positions that are progressive, I paint them as a guy who grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who's talking who understands innovation, who understands

how we build wealth, who wants this for every part of America, and it's common sense. And I think so far, I'm sure that at some point it won't last so far. The media, it's a harder challenge for the media to paint me in that way. And that's, I think, why when I take certain stands, I draw such ire. I mean, why tech folks were so upset when I said, well, we shouldn't just be eliminating jobs with AI or why APEC is coming after me in my district? Because they know that I have some of that credit ability and they want to erode at that fundamental asset, which is trust. They want to, you know, IPEC is running an ad in my district, not upon saying things about my policies, saying Rokana is a liar. And so they are going at my core character because they

understand that I built some trust with the work I've done. Yeah. It's kind of hilarious that in D.C., if you agree with the overwhelming majority of the American people, they're like, does he have enough credibility? It's the exact opposite of reality. And of course, the media is different now because there's the, basically the mainstream media, which is what I was asking you about. And then there's online media. And in online media, I don't know a Democrat that's got more credibility than you do. And that's because people see you actually fighting for the voters, not caring about partisanship and leading on all these issues. So we appreciate that and we appreciate you joining us tonight on the Young Turks.

Thank you, Jank. Thank you. Keep at it. Your voice and platform has been a game changer. Thank you. All right, Representative Brokata, everybody. All right, guys. So that'll do it too for tonight. I don't have any random stories for you guys. I'll have to save it up for Friday. I'll see you guys tomorrow.