The Young Turks - Paul Manafort Pleas, Trump Nervous?

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

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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. You know what I'm saying? Welcome to the Young Turks. Is that translated into English? Jank Huger, the lovely and brilliant Anna Kasparian.

Hey, how you doing? Good. I like the color matching of your hair to the dress. Does my hair match my dress? No, no, it's just a nice combo. Oh, it's a nice combo. I'm actually kind of matching you. You're wearing a pink shirt.

It is. That's true. I hadn't thought of that. Okay, so now that we've gotten the most important part of the show out of the way, tonight's election night, heavyweight match, Andrew Cuomo v. Cynthia Nixon. There are, there's also several other just Democrats that are on the line. There's Zephyr Teachout. She's running for Attorney General.

She's not a just Democrat because that's not a position that just Democrats endorses in, but obviously super progressive. So that is all coming up at 805 Eastern tonight. John Iderola, Jimmy Doer, will join us. Furthermore, we're going to do a number of fun things. We're going to show you the Super Turks. That's super fun. I hope we have time to cover a story that was written about us.

A little bit of drums. Okay. So lots of madness on tonight's election show. That's coming up in a couple hours. First, we've got the Young Turks. On this show, I mean, do I have to bother telling you that Donald Trump has said something stupid? And we move forward. Anyways, but speaking of elections, I want to do.

one thing quickly. So last night we went off the air because the lieutenant governor race had not been called yet and it was really close. There was 91% reporting and that last 9% did not come in for hours and hours and hours. So I wanted to just, if you missed the Rhode Island results last night, I give you a quick summary here. First of all, in the governor's race, there was a wonderful just Democrat Matt Brown. He did not wind up winning, he was up against an incumbent Democrat, that's obviously a much, much harder race. And Gina Raimondo won 57.2 to Matt Brown's 33.5%. But that's a good showing for Matt Brown.

Obviously, we wish he to pull it off. Now, the lieutenant governor's race that was hanging in the balance when we last left, you wind up resulting in about the same place when we left air last night. Daniel McKee did pull it off 51.1% Aaron Regenberg's 48.9. Regenberg was a just Democrat. He'd been leading earlier in the night. So that went back and forth, back and forth. That's why you shouldn't miss any of our live election coverages. There was a lot of drama there. TYT.com slash live, obviously, to watch all of those. The last primaries tonight in New York, and then the general election on November 6 is going

to be a bonanza slash bananas. We are going to have an experience. extravaganza here at the young Turks. Now, real quick, two other irrelevant races, because they're fun. The U.S. Senate's race on the Republican side in Rhode Island was 87.7% to Robert Flanders, obviously, brother of Ned. But why do I bring that up? Because he was up against Rocky Delafonte. And if you watched our election coverages, Rocky Delafonte somehow has managed to be on the ballot in at least half a dozen states. Almost every election night, we're like, Wait, what's Rocky Delafonte doing here? And he popped up in Rhode Island and grabbed 12.3% of the vote.

It's kind of amazing. Combined, he might have gotten more votes in this election cycle than anyone in all the different races he ran. And then finally, super random U.S. Representative of District 1 on the Republican side, Patrick Donovan got 78.4%. So why am I telling you this random Republican race? Because of his opponent, Frederick Wiesaki. Hmm, there's an Aaron Wysaki, who's the commander of the armies of the east for the young Turks,

and I just noted that his uncle unfortunately lost that race. Okay, it's not his actual uncle, but that was fun. Super random, that's all. Now you know what happened in Rhode Island? Unfortunately, no big wins for progressives or just Democrats, but that's life in the big city. Although there was a congressional race where a more conservative corporate data. Democrat lost. We'll take our victories where we can get them.

Okay, Casper, what's next? All right. There is a bombshell report involving Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee, and it is quite a doozy. We don't know too many details about these allegations, but it turns out that Senate Democrats have come across some concerning information and would like to postpone the vote confirming him as a Supreme Court justice. So this all started with Diane Feinstein.

She essentially let everyone know that someone came to her and said that this individual was the victim of sexual misconduct. And the person who committed that alleged sexual misconduct was Brett Kavanaugh. And so as a result, Democrats in the Senate would like to review more of this information. Diane Feinstein says that she has forwarded this information to the FBI for further investigation. So let me give you her exact quote on this. She says, I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

That individual strongly requested confidentiality declined to come forward or press the matter further. And I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities, meaning the FBI. So we, again, don't know too much about this because they haven't released any real detail into this alleged sexual misconduct. But here is the little tiny bit that we do know. Two officials briefed on the letter's contents told in New York Times the allegations relate

to a possible sexual misconduct between Kavanaugh and an unidentified woman when they were both in high school. Kavanaugh is in his 50s. He's 53. Yeah. So, look, back when I was a Republican, I believed in some conspiracy theories, and I thought that maybe they had brought in Anita Hill to try to make sure Clarence Thomas didn't win. Boy, I was totally wrong about that.

And so Anita Hill, of course, was incredibly real and her allegations were real. And then obviously the country back then was split on whether her allegations were enough to derail Clarence Thomas's, you know, a nomination to the Supreme Court. And so I give you that as context because senators don't make things up. They're not going to risk their careers to make things up. So this person went to a U.S. congresswoman in California first, and that person took it to Diane Feinstein. Now, does that mean that the person is telling the truth?

We don't even know who she is. We have no idea, right? But this is real, so that's point one. They have a real person saying there was this sexual assault a long, long time ago, okay? Now, the woman does not want to come forward with her real name at all, and she's apparently very, very clear about that. So if she never comes forward, I don't know what you make of that. I don't know if the FBI can figure out, you know, what to do about this in a short period

of time as they've delayed the confirmation hearings for a while. Now, and I tell you all of that, because of course the Republicans are going to say, oh, it's a dirty trick by the Democrats, et cetera, and the Republicans would know a thing or two about dirty tricks to delay confirmation proceedings. So they live in a glass house on that one. Now, substantively, this happened in high school. So it would have to be a very, very serious charge for, I think, in my opinion, to affect the confirmation proceedings.

Now, look, I think that Kavanaugh would be a terrible justice. I'm 100% opposed to him on a great number of issues, including his views on women's rights and his views on Citizens United. He's pro-corruption, and I think it's unacceptable. But, and the charges might be, you know, I don't know if it's, they've used different words, one phrase with sexual misconduct. The charges might be serious enough. So I'm not prejudging that at all because I have no idea what they are.

But if you're going back to high school, I think they have to be more and more and more serious. He's a 53 year old man now. So that's my opinion with the very little facts that we have so far. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to have an opinion with very little facts. On one hand, you know, if someone came to me, if I were a U.S. senator and someone came to me and confided in me that he or she had been the victim of sexual misconduct and this Supreme Court nominee could be confirmed and then serve as a Supreme Court justice, I would be concerned. I think I would probably handle it the same way that Senator Feinstein handled it, but

it is difficult to have an opinion on it because we don't know anything about this misconduct. We don't know if, you know, he had sexually assaulted someone. We don't know if he was sexually harassing a student. We know that he went to an all-boys school. So I don't know, you know, in what environment, in what context of this alleged. We don't know anything. We don't know anything. It's just, it's hard to come out with a strong opinion.

And I think that's fine. But at the same time, you know, for the woman who did come forward, I understand why she wouldn't want to be identified because we know how incredibly cruel and just terrible it is. For women who come forward and allege any type of sexual misconduct, they immediately become the enemy. And especially when politics is involved, it gets even worse. I mean, we saw what happened to Anita Hill. We're living in an even worse society when it comes to that issue, if you ask me.

Yeah, in a lot of ways we've gone backwards. So Anita Hill was viciously attacked at the time. But that was pre-aulright, pre-Trolls, pre-Trump era. And so things were bad back then, but there is a particular ugliness today. So no one can blame the woman for, and let me be clear, he went into an all-boy school, but it's an unidentified woman that came forward. No one can blame her for being concerned that the right wing might try to portray her as something she's not if she comes forward.

Okay, so that's why I'm telling you, and I think that I'm good like to stand on here on this, if the allegations were from last year or relatively recently, then they are more relevant because they affect his current character, who he is as a person right now. Who he is as a person right now, that's exactly right, Anna, but also how he does on the job, how he conduct himself as a judge, those are super relevant. The further back you go, the more, the heart of the standard is, if you ask me, okay? And people can disagree on that. But, I mean, we're going to judge people on what they did in high school.

What are we considering sexual misconduct? I have no idea. I have no idea. Again, we don't know what the alleged sexual misconduct is. So what if it wasn't actions, but it was words? Can anyone withstand that scrutiny? I don't know. But I'll leave it at that because we don't have any more information now.

But the proceedings are a little bit delayed as apparently the FBI looks into it. And I think that the FBI, maybe they can come to a quick decision. Because if it goes back that four, they could see, well, is this really serious? If it's not really serious, I don't think the FBI is going to say, wait, I'm going to conduct a federal investigation on something that happened, you know, 35 years ago if it's not that serious. Right. But we'll see. So right now the Senate is planning on voting for Kavanaugh or voting in regard to Kavanaugh on September 20th. And Republicans are saying there's absolutely no reason to postpone this or delay this.

we are planning on going forward as planned, but we'll see what happens. And by the way, a White House spokesperson came forward and blamed all of this on Chuck Schumer, as if Chuck Schumer does anything. Like, it's hilarious because Chuck Schumer is actually not involved in any of this at all, other than the fact that he's a Democratic senator, a very weak one at that. And so I want to give you the statement from Kerry Koupeck, who released this statement. Senator Schumer promised to oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination with everything I have, and it appears he is delivering with this 11th hour attempt to delay his confirmation. Except Schumer isn't the person who came forward with these allegations, with this statement.

Like, the fact that they're immediately pinning it on Schumer makes me think they have something to hide, you know? It's weird to attack Schumer. Yeah, I don't know. We're really guessing here. Look, are the Democrats doing research on Kavanaugh to try to find something? on him? Of course they are. And they should be. Did they find a woman from high school? Schubert just helped the Trump administration confirm 20 federal judges. He brokered a deal with Mitch McConnell, okay, to hurry up and confirm 20 federal judges that Trump chose, okay? And then what does

the White House do? When there's a little bit of drama with this Kavanaugh thing, they come forward and they blame Schumer for it. Schumer, stop making deals with Republicans. You are so pathetic. He's so with etiquette and embarrassing. That's interesting because, you know, the Democrats are constantly under the belief that, no, but if we're nice to Republicans, they'll be nice back. Do they look like they're being nice back, Chuck? Okay, so that we do know, and is a fair point. Yeah.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break here. We've got a lot more coming up. So stay right with us. Jake and Anna with you guys. We're doing a membership drive. We want to check it on it every day. Trying to get to 100,000. It's a preposterous goal, but we like to be crazy like that.

We started at a little over 27,000. Let's see where we are now. And it's about nine days later at 30,934. Can I see 31,000 by the end of the show? Can I see 31,000? T.Y.T.com slash join to become a member. Now, part of what we're doing here is sharing with you guys, and a lot of you've written some wonderful stuff in here, and I want to highlight it, and today is Rachel, and she has

an excellent email that she sent into us. So, she wrote in, I started watching the actress in 2010 when I was 13 years old. I'm Canadian, so a lot of my knowledge of the USA came from TYT. Over the years, I've relied on TYT for honest news as I became an aware teenager, and then a voting citizen and now an adult. Not once in the past eight years have I ever doubted TYT. I've admired your integrity to admit when you're wrong, but overwhelmingly report the news in a way that is honest, but also relatable, that didn't make me feel dumb for being young with opinions. I don't know how to send this message, but particularly I wanted to send a thank you to Anna.

Growing up with a TYT, growing up with TYT, seeing a strong woman arguing her opinions without buckling to anyone around her was incredibly powerful. I would thank Anna for my unwillingness to buckle when a conservative bro tries to talk me down in a polycyclass. I finally became a TYT member today. So I want to thank her and she watched for eight years, she remains a loyal fan and she's enjoying now all the shows, of course. But that was a powerful message.

Yeah, it was. Thank you, Rachel. That meant a lot to me. And look, you know who was a young person with opinions at TYT? Me, when I started. I was like, I think 19, about to turn 20 when I started at TYT. And I had strong opinions really early on. And I never felt stupid for having opinions here.

I was oftentimes wrong. I remember one of the first debates that we had was on whether or not it made sense to legalize prostitution. I don't even know if you remember that. But I was anti-legalizing prostitution, engage in a debate with Jenko on that. And I was wrong. And it was a good learning experience. Well, you want some debates as well throughout the years.

Yeah, well, you grow, you mature. Right. And obviously, when I was young, I was a Republican and changed my ways as well. Look, that's what we're trying to do here. Foster an environment where we could all learn together, grow together. And so Rachel, the fact that you were part of that for eight years is fantastic. That's the main reason why we do this show. And we say one last thing.

I was out for dinner the other day, and the woman who was running the cash register was at a TYT viewer too. She's also around 19, 20 years old going to college around here. And she wanted to say, mention to me specifically to say how much she admires Anna. And I got to tell you, I am super proud of that, that you have become a role model. model for strong women. Yeah, I mean, I never expected to, but it's, like, I don't think the women who feel that way realize how much they keep me going, because this job is insanely difficult.

And there are moments where you're just like, I don't know if I can keep going. And just when I feel like I'm hitting rock bottom and I can't keep going forward, I'll get messages like that from women specifically. And thank you. And that's not to say that I don't get the love from our male viewers as well. I appreciate that as well. But I think it's in the political world, there's something extra when it comes to being a woman.

Yeah, and look, at our best, that's when we support you guys, you support us back and when we got each other's back and I'm proud of that and I love that you guys are taking part in that. So thank you. And so as we told you, the membership drive is to build a home of Progressive, so let's do it together. TYT.com slash join to make that happen. Now, I read all that, but I got to read you two quick comments from today because they're great.

Allison wrote in, I'm a new member as well. Very excited to be here. Love to listen to your sanity. Thank you. Jane VX3 said, I'm so eager to see the primary coverage. Thank you guys for covering all these amazing races. I voted absentee for Cynthia and all the progressive candidates running in my area. Thank you guys for giving a platform to these amazing candidates.

I voted for every election since 2016 primary. Seriously, pollsters started calling my cell phone number since I'm now a quote-unquote likely voter. I would never have heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zephyr Teachout, or Jamani Williams without you guys. Thank you, Jane. Really, really appreciate it. Again, that's us hopefully at our best and building a progressive movement together. And I just love that that's what we do for a living. All right, more news for you guys.

All right. Paul Manafort will take a plea deal. In fact, he is cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And this is right before his second trial is set to begin. Now, we have done some pretty extensive coverage on his first trial, which did result in eight convictions for fraud and for failing to register as a foreign agent. And so we don't know exactly what this plea deal contains. at the moment. We don't know how he plans on cooperating with Mueller. But what we do know so far is that the deal is expected to be announced in court tomorrow Friday. And it remains

unclear whether Manafort has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors or simply conceding to a guilty plea, which would allow him to avoid the stress and the expense of another trial. So if you are excited about this news, just hold. Because again, we don't know if this is just him saying, all right, I'm guilty, let's just get on with it, or if he's actually planning to really cooperate in this special investigation. So, you know, he got convicted on eight counts earlier, so facing a maximum of 80 years, but in reality, he's more likely to get about seven years. Why? Do you know why?

I don't. It's because he's rich, powerful. He didn't cooperate at all. I mean, usually that happens when you take a plea deal. They'll shorten the sentence. He did not cooperate, and he was convicted of eight charges, he's supposed to get, you know, somewhere around 80 years, he gets seven years. I don't know, it just seems strange. I kid around because he's rich and powerful, but I'm barely kidding. Because if you're poor and you're facing 80 years, you might get 70.

No, you might get 80. Right, you might get 80 if you went to trial, that's right. And so the details of that are a different situation than the news of today. But if he's actually facing only about 70 and does a plea deal on the second. set of charges and gets a couple years more out of that, he might actually make it out alive because the thought was he might see 69 years old. He might serve the rest of his life in prison. So that's why he might have done the deal without necessarily giving evidence on Trump. He spent only four hours with prosecutors in the deal. That might or might not mean

anything. Four hours might seem like a lot. But if they were getting a ream of information about collusion with Russia, it would likely take longer. But it might be the first meeting. And they might be meetings afterwards. So, and we might be able to tell them, this is breaking right now, right, as we're live on the air, we might be able to tell based on the sweaty tweets that Trump sends tonight. Yeah, no, but yes, you're absolutely right about that. But this is my analysis, speculation, whatever you want to call it. This is my read of what's going on.

Look, I think that if Manafort does have dirt on Trump but decided, no, I'm not going to cooperate, he's made that decision because he knows that Trump has no problem pardoning whomever he pleases. But that's if he has the power to pardon people. Trump has become even more unhinged. He's starting to lose even more allies. Talks of impeachment have become, I guess, more serious. I mean, especially after the Woodward book and that anonymous op-ed. I think there's a possibility that Manafort sees this situation as dire and realizes, oh, there's a possibility that Trump might

not be able to pardon me. Well, so that cuts two ways. He might have wanted to take the plea deal right away so that he can get a pardon right away while Trump's still in office. So that's another possibility. Look, I wasn't convinced that Manafort had anything on Trump in the first place until Trump went ballistic after his conviction. And so that led me to believe and started immediately talking about pardon, pardoned,

it could be pardoned, it could be pardoned now, could be pardon later, I could pardon at any time I want. And I was like, okay, he's got something on him. That's clear. So whether he turned that over today is unclear. and only Mueller and Manafort know for now, but at least that chance has increased. And Anna's right, it could be cut the other way that if he thinks not only impeachment, but my God, it turns out his cabinet is talking about the 25th Amendment, that they might rule

a mentally incompetent to be president, then he might be thinking, well, oh well, I don't have time. Because Giuliani said, hey, after the whole investigation, Mueller investigation is over, then we might pardon him. But Trump might not be in office by then. So too hard to tell right now, the meetings are closed doors, but it is big news that he has decided to take a guilty plea here because it certainly increases the chances that he's cooperating with prosecutors and giving them relevant information. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government,

the media and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-the-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional

and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must have learned what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, let's move on to Puerto Rico because there are some updates to that story. Donald Trump does not believe the official death toll of Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Maria. And we know that because of an asinine tweet that he put out there just today.

He says 3,000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the island after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by, it did not go up by much. How do you know? How do you know? You haven't been concerned about it, not aware. Anyway, then a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3,000. Okay.

So as we have reported here at the Young Turks, George Washington University went in and did the research and the analysis necessary to find more accurate numbers because more than 64 people had obviously died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. And they found that 2,975 people had died, and they had died for a number of reasons. The investigation looked at the total number of deaths from September 2017 through February 2018 and compared it with typical death rates adjusting for many variables, including the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who evacuated the territory after the storm struck on September 20th.

So why did so many people die in the aftermath? Well, it was because of a number of reasons, including the widespread and lengthy power outages, a lack of access to adequate health care, water insecurity, and then diseases related to the crisis. So there were a number of problems, many of which FEMA did admit to when they did an after, you know, after they released a report about their failures and some of the issues involving their relief efforts. But Trump is in, you know, La La Land thinking that everything that he did was absolutely perfect and only what does he really think? that only six to 18 people died? Yeah, so look, when he says when he first went to the island, they were saying that a lower

number of people died. That's true. And for a long time, they were saying that 64 people had died in the storm. That's also true that for a long time they were saying that. So what was the difference? It's the report that Anna explained to you guys. So if you're president and you're responsible for all the people in this country, yes, including Puerto Rico, well, you would care to get it right and understand why they increase the number

and why those people died in the first place. Because when you look into that, the answer is even more tragic than if they had died on the day of the storm. So a lot of those deaths were preventable. Electricity goes out and then they don't have the adequate health care and they die because a lot of folks need electricity for their health. care, they're in the hospitals, et cetera. More importantly, in isolated homes where they're taking care of themselves, et cetera.

So many of those deaths were preventable, it wasn't like, well, I mean, there's a big storm. Paul Ryan today saying like, I mean, it's a big storm. What could you do, man? It's an isolated island. We're going to get to Paul Ryan in just a second. Yeah. But sorry to jump in. I just, I can't help but do it.

Like, Trump has this way, and I don't think a lot of people realize it, where he will both deny while simultaneously making excuses. So which one is it? So he'll deny that they did a horrible job in Puerto Rico. No, we did a great job. Everything was wonderful in Puerto Rico. A plus. Our efforts in Puerto Rico were even better than our efforts in Texas and Florida. Okay, he'll say that. But in the same statement, he'll also say things about how, oh, Puerto Rico's power grid was really bad. And, you know, it's an island and it's surrounded by big water. Okay, so if you did such a great job, why are you now listing all of your excuses for why you did a horrible job. Yeah, well, and then the second tweet that he sent this morning goes to that.

And he has no sense, right? Any normal president would, even if they were going to say, hey, listen, 3,000 people died later, I'm a little skeptical. They would frame it in an enormously polite way, respectful of the people who did die, of course, not going to do any of that. But then he goes into delusional paranoia. He continues in that series of tweets. by saying, this was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible

when I was successfully raising billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico. He's so pathetic. He's so pathetic. You don't need any help making yourself look bad. Trust me.

Democrats don't have to lift a finger to make you look bad. But I mean, it must be a wonderful. existence to be that delusional about who you are as a person and to think that you're that fantastic while you're a complete and utter failure, not just now as president, but throughout your entire life. Yeah, well, you know, it's of course the deepest security. At night, he doesn't think that. He wakes up in a cold, sweaty panic about what a failure and loser he is every single day.

That's the one solace I take. And that's why he'll do those crazy tweets either in the early in the morning or in the middle of the night. But nothing is ever his fault. Look, remember the famous saying about the White House? The buck stops here. Harry Truman said that. Trump is the exact opposite of that.

Buck stops over there. Over there, the Puerto Ricans, they were lazy. He said, he talked about how they didn't prepare enough. You didn't prepare enough. Lazy, you never prepare for anything. There's been a thousand stories about how you won't even read one page to prepare for incredibly important meetings. You have no idea what's going on.

The nerve of this guy to insinuate that anybody else is lazy, but he's got to blame other people. Who did it? Who messed it up? It was the Democrats. The Democrats are trying to blame me. Did the people actually die or did they not there? Everyone acknowledges, yes, they died. The report says it's because they were not getting the care after the storm. If it were not for the storm, they would not have died. Everyone else on the planet agrees to that, including FEMA. And why? Because they're actually being rational and saying, hey, I want to make sure I get it right. So when the storm hits North Carolina and South Carolina today, then I don't make the same mistakes.

That's because they care. And look, that's under the Trump administration, but they're doing a good job. But Trump at the top is like, no, it was the Democrats, it was the Puerto Ricans. I don't have to do homework. Homework's annoying. I don't have to prepare for anything. I give myself an A plus. No, he's been preparing for everything his whole life, just like he did with North Korea,

another issue that he bungled. Okay. Trump is so ridiculous with his handling of Puerto Rico and his response to criticism of how he handled it, that even some Republicans are pushing back against him. Now, Republicans are afraid of Donald Trump, so they're doing so in the weakest way imaginable. And I want to give you one example. Here's Paul Ryan talking about the Puerto Rican death toll. He says only 6 to 18 people died.

You've been to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of that storm. What do you think happened there? Casualties don't make a person look bad. That's not. So I have no reason to dispute these numbers. I was in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. It was devastated. This was a horrible storm.

I toured the entire island. And it's an isolated island that lost its infrastructure and its power for a long time. You couldn't get to people for a long time on the island because roads were washed out. Power was gone. And the casualties mounted it for a long time. So I have no reason to dispute those numbers. Those are just the facts of what happens when a horrible hurricane hits an isolated place like an island. Okay.

No, the death toll does make someone look bad because it could have been easily avoided, kind of like how it was avoided in Florida and in Texas. It was because there was much more attention paid to those states as opposed to Puerto Rico. Look, this excuse that it's an island is also pathetic. Yeah. What, we don't have ships? We can't reach an island. We don't have planes. We spend an insane amount of money on our military so we can have the best, the most updated, you know, capabilities. Our ships, our, you know, our Air Force has the best jets and the best planes, the best everything. So where's that money going? We can't use some of that money to help with relief efforts for U.S. citizens. And by the way, Rick Scott is another Republican politician.

He's running for Senate in the state of Florida. He's another one who kind of pushed back against Trump, but did so in an insanely weak way. He says, I disagree with POTUS and independent studies said thousands were lost. And Governor Rosello agreed, we'll get to Rosello in just a minute. I've been to Puerto Rico seven times and saw devastation firsthand, yada, yada, yada, okay. Rick Scott is realizing that he needs to distance himself from Trump because, guess, That's where Puerto Ricans fled to, to Florida.

Yeah. So Rick Scott is totally disingenuous. He's a horrible person. He's never cared about Latinos before, and now that there's 1.2 million Puerto Ricans voting in Florida, and he is running for a Senate seat in Florida. He's like, me, I love Puerto Ricans. I think what happened to Puerto Rico is an outrage. Everybody knows how much I care about minorities.

Oh, get the hell out of you, Rick Scott, you bragged about crushing minorities before with your, you know, the, oh, we're tough guys in Florida, we're gonna do stand your ground and we're gonna, and we're gonna, and if anybody gets in our way and all this stuff, now all of a sudden, oh, hey, the voting electorate in Florida has shifted a little bit. Oh my god, did you see what happened to Puerto Rico? I care so much. Spare me, you're such a fake, phony politician. Yeah, Puerto Ricans are now a key voting block, 1.2 million.

Puerto Ricans fled from Puerto Rico to Florida. That's why Rick Scott is pushing back against Trump a little bit. All right, so there's one other aspect of the story that I want to get to. Following Trump's denial of the official death toll in Puerto Rico following the storm, Hurricane Maria, the governor of Puerto Rico actually pushed back against him, which is odd because he initially cooperated with Trump and agreed with him on everything. Let's hear what he has to say now. How can we be as the United States?

How can we be the standard bearer of democracy in the world? If we don't value democracy in our own backyard, how can we have over 3 million U.S. citizens that don't have the right of the vote that are disenfranchised and that after the storm, it is evident that the treatment that was given, say, in Florida or in Texas, was very different than the treatment given in Puerto Rico. That's interesting. It's very different from what he had said previously, but I want you to jump in, Jank, before I provide evidence of that.

Yeah, so the best case scenario for the governor is, well, look, I was being nice to Trump because we wanted federal help at that time, and, you know, the guy's an orange baby. And he didn't say any of this, by the way. This is his defense, if you were going to make one for him. And if you, you know, if you criticize him in any way, or ask for help too aggressively as the mayor of San Juan did, then he'll hate you forever, call you nasty, and then not give you anything. But as it turned out, he didn't help much anyway. So now he's turning around. My guess as to why the government is turning around is he probably saw poll numbers in Puerto Rico, and

they hate Donald Trump. And he's like, me? Me being nice to Donald Trump. I meant, well, Donald Trump didn't help us enough. Well, that's a little bit late there, brother. Yeah, well, part of the problem with, you know, the official death toll was that there were politicians, in Puerto Rico that weren't pushing enough to get the number updated. The number was at 64 until fairly recently. And by the way, I just, if you don't know who Donald Trump is by now, then I worry about you because it shows an insane lack of judgment, right? Because he's shown us who he is.

It's time that people actually believe who he is. So with that said, here's how he treated Donald Trump and his efforts in Puerto Rico previously. I'm gonna go to video four, so I'm skipping ahead, but this is from October of 2017. Here is Governor Ricardo Rosello. I give ourselves a 10. We have provided so much, so fast. We were actually there before the storm hit. I would give a 10.

I think we did a fantastic job, and being giving credit, we have done a really great job. I think our response was better than anyone has ever seen. Did the United States did our government when we came in? Did we do a great job? Military, first responders, FEMA, did we do a great job? You responded immediately, sir, and you did so. You know, Tom and Brock, they have been on the phone with me essentially every day. That's so embarrassing.

So many ways. But there's more. I want to go to the next video just to show you how Trump will use your statements against you. He's not even from my party. And he started right at the beginning. appreciating what we did. And he was tremendously supportive.

And Governor, I just want to tell you that right from the beginning, this governor did not play politics. He didn't play it at all. He was saying it like it was, and he was giving us the highest grades. I also want to thank your Congresswoman. So Congresswoman Jennifer Gonzalez-Cologne, who I've watched the other day, and she was saying,

such nice things about all of the people that have worked so hard. Jennifer, do you think you could say a little bit what you said about us today? And it's not about me. Always about you. Always. Always. He thinks, by the way, as we stated earlier in the show, that the Democrats somehow invented the number of people killed to blame him.

Yeah. They actually died. And the mayor of San Juan keeps saying, hey, it's not about you. Can you just respect the dead for one? Second, if you notice in the first video, he's like, when our government, the United States came in, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. But okay, let's assume he meant the federal government and move on. Everybody's giving us a 10.

In the second video, he was good from the beginning. He gave us the highest grades. It's not about you. There was a hurricane. All these people died. And more were dying as you were bragging about your score of 10. you weren't getting them the help that they needed. And that's why so many people died.

But he's, he can't, he's such a narcissist. He can't think of anything but himself. Look, the reason why this is such a big deal is not only were lives lost that didn't need to be lost, but it shows you, you know, his lack of taking responsibility and also, like, learning from past mistakes and readjusting moving forward. And it's particularly important to learn lessons from past failures when it comes to hurricane relief, when you have deadly hurricanes happening on a yearly basis because of extreme weather conditions.

I know that he's in denial about climate change. I know that there's a whole political party in this country who keeps pretending that they don't believe in climate change. But it's happening, and it's certainly contributing to severe weather conditions. It's exacerbating hurricane seasons. And we need to learn from that. We need to do something to not only mitigate that, but make sure that we're ready when these types of hurricane strike.

And if you have a president who thinks that he's fantastic at everything he does and refuses to take responsibility for his failures, how is he going to act moving forward? So finally, why did Rosello turn around and now tweak Donald Trump? I don't think that was criticism was significant. You want to see significant criticism. Let's go to Graphic 21. Here's San Juan Mayor Carmen Cruz. Simply put, responding to Donald Trump's tweets that we read you earlier in the program.

Delusional, paranoid, and unhinged from any sense of reality. Trump is so vain he thinks this about him. No, it is not. And she went on to say, your lack of respect is appalling. So when you saw the governor earlier, that's not a very strong response. But the fact that he's even criticizing Trump at all, why? 80% of Puerto Ricans polled said that they were disappointed in how Trump handled the hurricane. I don't know who the other 20% are.

But if you're trying to win re-election in Puerto Rico, you might not want to go against 80% of the people there. We got to take a break. Yes. So there's a couple of amazing stories left, of course. And one is about how Donald Trump wanted to illegally discriminate against the disabled actively. And a person who is involved in that process speaks out. It really goes to his character. That's an amazing, amazing story.

And then we have a story where that's partly about us. It's not about us, Jank. It's not about us. Okay. Well, that one actually kind of is about us. But what did we have this, what did this Muslim kid do after watching the Young Turks? Reuters wrote about it. It's fascinating.

I don't think you want to miss it. We'll come right back and tell you. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on the Young Turks. So first, let me tell you about NordVPN.

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Make sure you use promo code TYT or go to NordVPN.com slash TYT to get that 77% off. Okay, now, comments. Timothy wrote in from the members section. I once heard something from someone who is like a smart person. He said, quote, what you're seeing and what you're hearing is not what's happening. He literally said that. And today in Puerto Rico, or about Puerto Rico, same thing. What you're seeing what you're hearing is not what's happening.

Amazing. Remember when Kim Jong-il, at least like, I don't know if he would personally brag about it, but anyway, there were claims that he bowled a perfect game all the time. Yeah, no, no, that's why he likes his son, Kim Jong-Lun, that's right. Because Kim Jong-un's dad would constantly talk about how he bowls a 300 every time he goes bowling. Yeah. He once shot a 27 in golf. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives,

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But listen, guys, this is important. And ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. I don't even know what that means, but I guess that's perfect. No, it's not. It's 18 holes, so on a couple of the par fives, he took two shots.

Is he not merciful? Okay, and my favorite of all, that he had no anus. No, no, it's the best. Yeah, well, wait for it, wait for it from Trump. You think he won't say it? Knowing Trump, he would say, oh, yeah, he doesn't, well, I have an a, it's a best anus, it's a perfect anus. I have a bigger anus than him.

It's on my face, it's my mouth. He literally said I have a bigger button than him. So hold, hold, you never know. Anyways, he might also say, my mouth is bigger off the show me. Okay, anyways, David writes in on the member site. Hi, everyone, I've been watching since the early Obama years, and today I decided to become an insider as a birthday present to myself. I love that. Actually, I don't know if you guys can pull a thermometer up in time, but I'd love to check that.

Well, first, happy birthday. Yeah, happy birthday, David, da-da-da-da-da-p-da, okay, and see, now I read your comment because you're a member, those get moved up. It has its privileges. Now, last one is from Twitter. Really great point from the liberal mom. Now, for a minute, imagine Bush saying the only this that happened on 9-11 were those on the planes and in the 97th floor or above. Yeah. Both sides would have crucified him.

That is so true. That is such a good point, and I also want to just add to that because there were first responders who risked their lives to help, you know, save others, and then also stayed to help with the, you know, the relief efforts, clean up, all of that. And unfortunately, they weren't given protection and inhaled all these toxic, you know, chemicals, debris, all that stuff, and are now suffering the health consequences. Many of them have gotten cancer as a result. I remember a story about how Republicans did not want to fund or extend the funding for health care for those first responders.

That's right. Yeah. John Stewart on Daily Show had to embarrass them into backing the bill. They literally changed their votes because they were getting so much bad press because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They're like, oh, I just want to save the money for the rich, oh, god damn, and now I've got to pay for these guys that helped on nine. 11 because they got cancer, fine, we'll do it.

There's such bad guys. You want to talk about bad guys? I don't know if you've ever seen that video. Donald Trump talked about how he went down to 9-11 and cleaned, it helped in cleaning up the rubble a little bit. No, he didn't. Of course it's been proven to be a lie. No, he did interviews.

If he had picked up one piece of trash anywhere within Manhattan on that day, you would never hear the end of it. He'd be like, I was in there, I was in the middle of it. I was just picking up everything. I would help, you know, you helped a little bit? That's so obviously a lie. This is the most obvious lie in the world. Anyway, it's already been proven to be a lie as with almost everything else, he says.

And by the way, Dana Gould's coming up next. Some of you might know him. He's had a couple TV shows, been on Seinfeld, et cetera, has his own podcast, and is a writer for The Simpsons, which is pretty cool. He's going to do his second hour with us. Let me check the thermometer before I do the next story. 30,950. We're close, guys.

Can we see 31,000 by the end of the show, 31,000, okay? So now, Reuters has an interesting story that I want to tell you guys about. So it's about this young kid in Germany, two guys are out, she's just 15 years old. And unfortunately, he was considering going to Syria to get into the fight of radical Islam. So it's a super tough story to hear in the beginning. So he says, I had friends who like me were really radical extremists and even considered going to Syria or to Palestine to fight. Now, here comes a couple of twists.

First of all, two guys turns out to be gay. And so he was really conflicted and he wanted to cover that up because he grew up in a more fundamentalist family. his dad before he passed away, would constantly brag about how anti-gay he was, et cetera. So he almost wanted to overcompensate and to join up in a radical fight, et cetera. So he said, I thought being gay is bad and that through Islam by praying to God, I could cure myself and become normal. I started praying five times a day.

I just felt bad like I was dirty or inferior somehow. And I was really ashamed of my gay thoughts. Well, two things happened to him that changed his mind. So, and the end, this turns out to be a fantastic story. So one was, and right wing, I hope you're sitting down, a mosque. A mosque helped to de-radicalize him, okay? So it was only when Saraje came across the Ibn Rusht Goethe Mosque, one of only a handful of gay friendly mosques around the world, that he found a middle ground that allowed him to accept

both his sexuality and his faith, okay? And now, Sarathe says a couple more things to give you a sense of what was happening in his life. He said, I was struggling between being a normal 14 or 15 year old guy in Germany and being really religious. My friends were very religious, very radical. And when they told me that they were considering going to Syria, I started thinking about it too.

But as Reuters explains, a second thing happened to Saraj that made him change his mind. They explained, one turning point was hearing a presenter on the young Turks, a U.S.-based liberal news show, ask LGBT Muslims, why would you believe in a religion or a God if this God hates you, if this God will throw you to hell and let you burn forever? Now, that's weird. I thought that we were radical Islamic apologists. That is quite weird, yes. And apparently it made a big difference. He said later as well. If you're conflicted, it doesn't make any sense to listen to one group who tell you you're going to hell. So I have to admit, I'm super proud of that story. And I don't know if it was me or you who said it.

I'm not sure who it was, but obviously you heard it on the young Turks. And we talk about fundamentalist religion and how wrong it is all the time. It doesn't mean that all religious people are wrong. And that is a distinction the right wing have such difficulty with. So I think Christianity is completely wrong. But I think some of the best people on earth are Christians. Some nuns who fight for the poor, the needy, fight against nuclear war, et cetera. Martin Luther King was a reverend, and there's wonderful Muslims across the world who do likewise.

One of the really great things about Islam is how much it emphasizes helping the poor and those who are needy. Now, on the other hand, there are terrible parts of the Bible and the Quran. We talk honestly about both of those things. And unfortunately, the fundamentalists take the terrible parts in the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Quran, and turn it towards violence. And what we talk about on the show all the time is that you can be against those religions without being against the people in those religions.

Yeah, actually, you know, I never, it never really hit me until this moment because, look, The Armenian Genocide was a religious war when you really think about it, because Armenians were an ethnic Christian minority, and they were driven out by Turkish Muslims, right? Now, where did they go? They all went to Muslim majority countries where they were offered refuge, Syria, where my dad was born, Iran, I didn't know this, my maternal grandmother was born in Palestine, right? And so it's just important to understand that there are differences, even when it's comes to the exact same religion, there are differences in interpretation. And so it's unfair, I think,

both to Christians and to Muslims to take the most extreme individuals and then use them as a way to generalize about the entire religion. Yes. And look, for people who are thoughtful about this, what they realize is there's a ton of things that go into affecting a culture. So politics, socioeconomic conditions, religion, what the culture was there before the religion arrived. Even geography, all these things create the culture that you currently live in. And some parts of the culture are great, some parts are not so great. And it's okay to talk about that without talking about it in a hateful way where you discriminate against a whole set of people and you don't give them a chance. You view them as irredeemable and that you think only one thing drives them.

That if they are in a particular religion, they must believe every tenet of that religion and they must believe in the fundamentalist version of that religion. If Christians were held to that standard, well, then they would be condemned all throughout the world for the worst things in the Bible where there's massacre after massacre, which God encourages. If Jews were held to that standard, the Old Testament is brutal. And they shouldn't be, of course not, because do all the Christians and all the Jews believe everything in the Old Testament and New Testament, not remotely? And we're asking all of you who are religious to look into your Bible and look into your Quran.

And if someone tells you something hateful that comes out of that book, unfortunately, it isn't, there are plenty of those passages in the books. That is true. But there are also great passages and ask them why they are focusing on the hateful ones. Why do they not care about, you know, my favorite example in Leviticus, eating shellfish? Why is, it's right next to you shall not lie with another man if you're a man. So why do you emphasize the being anti-gay so much more, a thousand, a million times, a billion times more than not eating shrimp?

It makes no sense at all unless you have an agenda and that agenda is driven by hate. So don't believe people who say that everyone in a particular religion is one way. And at the same time, if you've got a fundamentalist who's telling you you're going to go to hell and that you should do something violent, you should do something against other people, don't ever believe that. It's not true. You know what you should believe in instead? Yourself.

And so when you're a young kid, it's hard to know sometimes in the world. And I need you to have the confidence to know that you were, if you think there is a God, he didn't make a mistake, he created you that way for a reason. And so don't believe people who tell you. that you're doing something wrong or that you should fear or hate yourself. You should love yourself. Man. Okay, guys, we've got to take a break.

We have a lot more stories. Unfortunately, more disaster from immigrants in this country. And then another Russian opposed to the Russian government gets poisoned. Comedian Dana Gould is going to join us next. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash

t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.