The Young Turks - Pentagon Party!

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Elon Musk threatens Pentagon leakers after NYT report on secret China war briefing. Trump signs executive order to dismantle the Education Department. AOC says “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us.” Marjorie Taylor Greene Accuses Jasmine Crockett Of ‘Organizing Political Violence’ Over Calls for Anti-Musk Non-Violent Protests. Hosts: John Iadarola, Jordan Uhl, Yasmin Khan SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. There are some problems here. Sorry, big time. I'm so upset. Oh my God. Begha! Big my team Bexie

Welcome, what at all to the Young Turks Power Panel. I am John Adirola and joined by the TDR All-Stars. We've got Jordan Yule. Jordan, thank you for being here. Of course. I'm happy to be an All-Star. Pleasure to have you here. And yes, as well, yes. How's it going? I didn't know I was an all star until right now, but I'm very happy to be one. This is fun. Well, we're always happy to have you on TDR. Happy to have you just as much on the Power Panel today. It is us three because Jank is still away on his worldwide tour. It's also apparently his birthday. So wherever he is, happy birthday to Jank. I hope that you're having a little bit of fun amongst all the events you're doing

and everything. But although Jank is away, we will have to play as much as one can play with the terrible news coming out of the White House these days. So we have a lot that we're to be talking about. Everybody out there watching, please hit the like button. If you're on a platform, and that's a thing that you can do. And we're going to jump at our first story starting with this. Elon Musk is a patriot. Elon Musk is an innovator. Elon Musk provides a lot of capabilities our government and our military rely on. And I'm grateful for that. We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about Doge, to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation. The rest of that reporting was fake. There was no war plans.

There was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans. That's not what we were doing at the Pentagon. So in that clip, we learned something, not really about the briefing that Elon Musk got with the Pentagon. We'll talk about that in a second. But just that from all of what he said and all the body language. God damn, Pete Hegseth is a weak little guy. He is. It is, it's a national shame and tragedy that he is in charge of our military, not only for all the reasons that we knew before he was nominated, before he was confirmed, but just everything. He just, he has lackey energy. He has hide behind the bully energy. And that's hardly who you want in charge of the military. But we're not here to talk mainly about Pete Heg says today. We're here to talk about the

fact that the Trump administration is now, as you saw in that video, denying the reports from multiple sources inside of the Pentagon that they gave a special private briefing to Elon Musk about what the United States would do were it to go to war with China. And that is certainly newsworthy, certainly a little bit odd. Elon Musk is not the secretary of the Department of Defense. He's not the secretary of anything. He is, at least if you believe what the White says not even in charge of doggy, the little organization concerned with modernizing our technology and efficiency. So why exactly he would be getting these private briefings, I think is raising a lot of alarms. Now, they're saying that it's not happening. Pete Hagsith is saying

that as we'll get to. Donald Trump is saying that they didn't actually happen. They haven't really earned a lot of credibility, I don't think, in terms of truthfulness, either of them. And so that's a bit of an issue for them. But according to those sources, the Pentagon was scheduled on today to brief Elon Musk on those plans concerning China. And it apparently did happen. The only question is exactly what was said during that. And so we know what was planned and it was not vague. It was very specific. Again, three sources. And they said that it would concern 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict with China. It covered the plan beginning with the indications and warning of

a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit over what time period that would be presented to Trump for decisions. So this is already this is in no way the concern of Elon Musk, who's only there, he's only getting this briefing because he bought the Republican party and bought Donald Trump for about 300 million as a down payment and he's spending more as we move forward. He's a rich guy. That's it. And evidently, that's all it takes. If you're the world's richest man, if you buy the Republican party, you might get access to the most closely guarded national security secrets. That were you to leak those to China for your own interest. If you were to, I don't know,

tweet them so that right wingers would think you were cool could do irreparable damage to American national security. And we have just decided that this guy, that we've never even gotten a confirmation, has a security clearance, has had a background check, anything like, like that, evidently had this hearing again according to multiple sources. And as we'll get into, there's many different conflicts that Elon Musk has concerning his business interests in China. And so this is getting a lot of people to be really concerned. We're to turn in a moment to what Donald Trump has had to say about this. But Jordan, I want to start with you. Elon Musk has had ridiculous access and ridiculous power

for a guy with no real formal job in the administration. But this feels to me like the most significant single thing? I don't. What do you make of it? Yeah, no, it absolutely is. There's a serious risk here. And I'm not one to clutch my pearls typically over national security risks. But I think here, if you want to just take it as an objective story, despite Trump's denials, the risks here when you juxtapose it with what anyone else with a security clearance has to go through. I've known people who have security clearances who have worked at different three letter agencies, they look into your bank accounts to make sure you aren't in debt because that is a vulnerability. Let's look at Elon Musk's relationships with China,

right? His largest factory for Tesla is in Shanghai, which produces over half of Tesla's supplies, over half of their cars. They have a massive battery factory also in Shanghai, which they just opened in 2024, and nearly half of their supply chain is in China for the for batteries. But unlike any other foreign car company, Tesla can operate independently. For example, Volkswagen had to start a new joint venture with a Chinese company. So he has preferential treatment, a huge vested stake. But he also has nearly half a billion dollars in loans from state-run banks in China. So you go back to what I was saying earlier. People with security clearances here in the government, their finances are poured over by the government to make sure

because you're at risk for a bribe. If you have debt, someone can come in say, hey, we'll take care of this for you. In exchange, we want X, Y, and Z. And you're even considering giving a guy who has half a billion dollars in loans from the Chinese state run banks in this information, it's jaw dropping. Yeah, I mean, he hasn't had a background check because he's not going to pass one and they know that. So how can they spend that? They just won't give it to him. But this does raise a lot of questions, not necessarily new questions, but questions around, you know, what are the actual parameters around Elon's powers?

John, you mentioned that he doesn't really have an official position in our government. He wasn't elected into position. He may or may not be the head of Doge. It really depends on who you ask and what day, because some days he is and some days he isn't. But, you know, how much authority does he actually have in our government? How is he able to just say things like, you know, he, I don't think you've mentioned this part yet, but he's, threatened journalists saying things, you know, like they will be found the people who are leaking things to journalists. That's such an overreach. Like what kind of power does this guy actually

have? The answer is obviously that there are no parameters as long as he is useful to Trump. He can do and say whatever he wants because Trump is going to protect him and all of Congress that backs Trump is also going to protect him because they supposedly believe in the work that he's doing, but really because Trump wants him there. And that's something that we're going to have to watch play out. The only reason why Trump is giving Elon so much access, whether or not he actually was at this China war briefing with the Pentagon, is because Trump is getting something out of having Elon so close to him. So for as long as he is useful, he's going to be around. And right now, I think he's useful to Trump in the sense that a lot of people are mad at Elon Musk and not so much at Trump pointing a lot. Trump is getting like half of the fingers that he should have pointed at him, pointed at him, because the other half are going to Elon Musk, even though,

everything Ewan is doing is because Trump either wants him to or is letting him do it. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs.

Only dinner's July 18th. Or, I mean, the third option is has to. Like, it's easy to think, well, he wants Elon in that meeting, but why? Why would Donald Trump, who, you know, one year ago had no interest in Elon Musk whatsoever? Why would he want Elon Musk involved in this? I think a far simpler explanation, a sort of political Akim's razor answer to this is Elon Musk said, I want this and Donald Trump can say yes or he can say no, and then Elon Musk doesn't spend half a billion dollars on the midterms. And maybe, I don't know, a billion dollars the next presidential election.

This is the issue when you have corruption on a scale, an order of magnitude higher than anything we've seen before. If you are a Maga person out there, how do you, how are you going to say that you know for sure that Donald Trump likes any of this when he is bought, when he has been purchased for $290 million and a hundred million that's already been promised for the midterms and 20 million that's gone towards swaying a judicial election in Wisconsin that's happening right now? When sums like that are being thrown around, how can Donald Trump tell him no? How can the Republicans in Congress tell Elon Musk no? How can they? There's just too much money on the line. And so Elon Musk effectively can just demand whatever he wants, let alone the fact that

we shouldn't be relying on this guy's corporations for a significant percentage of military technology. Let's say that Pete Hexeth wasn't being a massive liar in the video we showed you, which he was, but let's say that he wasn't. They do actually rely on Starlink and stuff like that. Should our military be dependent on one deranged, childish, foreign-born billionaire? Is that the MAGA way? Is that make America great again? Is that America first? None of this is. Why is Donald Trump effectively, arguably being led around on a dog leash by the richest man in the world who's getting access that you would never feel comfortable if George Soros was like, I want to be briefed on the war plans or whatever, whoever,

insert a billionaire, Bill Gates wants briefings on, I don't know, how chips can be integrated into your bloodstream or something. You'd never be comfortable with that. Why is the MAGA movement so willingly and so wholly surrendering to Elon Musk in this? Why are they okay with this much corruption? I'll never understand it. Now, Donald Trump has been freaking out about these reports and he should. It looks terrible. It makes him look incredibly weak. So anyway, he truth social posted. The fake news is the enemy. of the people. So don't focus on the fact that a billionaire has all this access. Instead get mad at Maggie Haberman or whatever. And Elon is not being briefed on anything, China, by the Department of War. So let's set aside for now that Grandpa apparently has forgotten that it hasn't been called the Department of War in like 80 years or whatever.

Imagine if Joe Biden did that super weird. Literally in his entire life has not been called that. Why is he calling it that? Super weird. But anyway, as he has alluded to, Musk is saying that he wants the leakers at the Pentagon who leaked maliciously false information to be locked up again. I've seen no evidence yet that what they said was untrue and why would three people independently lie in this way? It doesn't make any sense, but again, they want to lock up everyone who gets in their way. That's par for the course at this point. And so they had this meeting. And as they're coming out, New York Times reporters asked them what was actually disqualification.

discussed. If it wasn't China war plans, why did Musk have to have any sort of briefing with the Pentagon? And Pete Hexas said, why would I tell you? And I have no doubt that Maga will agree. Yeah, why would journalists? Why would you tell journalists that? Well, journalists are how you get information. They are effectively saying to an intermediary, why would I tell any American what's going on here? You peasants don't need to know. Rich, powerful people were in the meeting. You're not our concern. You don't get to know about that stuff. Billionaires are talking. All of you can shut the hell up. That's the message that I got from that. But anyway, I want to turn before we discuss a bit more to one more bit of video. And this is Donald Trump

having to engage with the idea that Elon Musk's foreign business ties with China could actually be sort of an issue. You guys are denying this New York Times report that Elon Musk was going to be shown a 20 to 30 page presentation about a theoretical war plan against China. Why not just show it to Elon? Because I don't want to show it to anybody. You know, you're talking about a potential war with China, but I don't want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn't show it to a businessman who is helping us so much. He's a great patriot.

He's paying a big price for helping us cut costs, and he's doing a great job. He's finding tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse. But I certainly wouldn't want, you know, Elon has businesses in China and he would be susceptible perhaps to that. Yeah, I think, well, I'm glad that he was willing to admit that that he was willing to recognize that having these business ties with China while being charge of policy would be a corrupting factor. I wish that he would look briefly in the mirror and realize that that same argument works perfectly well on Donald Trump, who also has those business ties. I guess it doesn't count, though, if you're not Hunter Biden or whatever. But there, he was like trying to present distance. Like I don't need to tell it to a businessman, who by the way is like the best thing ever.

And oh my God, he's doing such amazing work. Please, Elon, keep spending money on the Republican Party. All of this is just so sad. Again, they're never going to reveal what was actually there. We are going to have to for the next four years, rely on leakers. We won't know for sure if they're being honest. We hope that with multiple sources we can trust it, but you simply can't trust. at this point, anything coming out of Donald Trump or Elon Musk or Pete Hagsith. And so this is the

this is the really crummy position we're in Jordan. But any of the thoughts about this? Yeah, I want to take a closer look at his comment. He said, I don't want to show it to anybody. You're talking about a potential war with China. Since when? Why are we talking about a potential war with China? And I think even though it's clearly wrong, calling the Department of Defense, Department of War, like you pointed out, John. It reflects a broader militaristic and hawkish mindset in this administration. So I ask, where are the anti-war Republicans that we heard so much about? Where's anti-war Trump that we heard all about on the campaign trail? No new wars during his first term. He's going to continue that legacy, right? No, we're seeing reports

this week and last week that he's inching closer to a war to a war with Iran. Now he's briefing people like Elon Musk and others in his administration on a potential war with China, where are these so-called anti-war Republicans? Now is the time to stand up and speak out. Do you care about this or not? Of course, we knew it was ingenuous, but disingenuous. But what we're seeing here is a shift back to the old neo-con hawkish Republican Party that they tried to cover up with the facade for years. Many people fell for it, including some on the left, sadly. And it's the result in part of the Democrats seating ground to the right on war and on foreign policy. When you have hawkish Democrats leading the party, it creates an opportunity in a vacuum for the right to exploit on this topic.

So the response should be a strong and unified opposition to any war, potential war with Iran or China. Unfortunately, there are many Democrats who probably would support both of those fronts. It's funny. I like the way you presented that, Jordan, because I did have kind of a moment when I was reading about this story. And I was like, since when are like we go in a war with China? The thing is like this isn't a new conflict that they're referring to. But like the idea of war with China, it's kind of been on the table since the Biden administration, even from before that regarding China and its relationship to Taiwan. But, you know, this all this ramped up rhetoric around the war with China, the pending war with China. it's all, it's very sudden it feels like. And then on top of that, we have a potential war with Iran.

And on top of that, Trump has been talking about invading Panama and Greenland and Canada, this anti-war president. That is one of the things that they love to say about Donald Trump, too. It's not like there just weren't any wars whenever he was first president. There were always conflicts. So that was always a weird comment that people used to say about him because we're always kind of at war. But, you know, that was his big selling point. It was like, you know, he's the anti-war president.

It's like, I guess, you know, like he just, he didn't really start anything. He also hasn't ended the war in Ukraine or the situation in Israel and Palestine yet, which he said he was going to do. But regarding Elon Musk and Donald Trump, these two men are like comically entangled with one another. And John kind of alluded to this, you know, like they have such a weird relationship where they're, they're both, they both kind of need each other for one reason or another, but they don't really like each other, but they have to pretend like they do. And so we're just watching

this all play out. But the reality is that the things that we're talking about and the things that they're doing with the Pentagon, with the military, with all of their businesses and all of their business interests around the globe, it's very scary stuff that these people are so childish. And we just all have to kind of see what their whims, where their whims take them, right? China has said that they already consider SpaceX to be an extension of the U.S. military. So that is serious, right? And Elon Musk, he's called Taiwan's independence from China arbitrary and compared Taiwan. Taiwan is to China as Hawaii is to the United States. It's just over there, but it's ours. And we know that. That's not the case in Taiwan with China. But the fact

that he's saying these things is very distressing, very problematic. He shouldn't be saying these things. But the fact that he is technically outside of our federal government, he's allowed to say whatever he wants without any kind of pushback, right? These are incredible conflicts that not only impact people's actual lives, but they're rooted in history. These conflicts haven't just sprung up out of nowhere, even though now we're talking about it now. They go back decades at least, and they involve several world superpowers. But for all of that, here we have Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who is supposedly allegedly getting Pentagon briefings regarding global geopolitical situations, but he's really worried about how much money he has or how much money he will or

won't have if a war does or does not happen. Let's be real. Yeah, I think we are long past the point where Democrats should be figuring out some way to get like get Elon Musk out of government. They're not going to be able to do instantly, but it's certainly something to run on. Nobody likes Elon Musk and fewer will like him every day getting him and if necessary not him individually, but every billionaire out of politics I think would be a massive improvement for national security among other things you guys were totally right like it is utter chaos Donald Trump's foreign policy from a guy that was sold as being like the peace president which as you say never made sense he didn't end a single war the first time he was president and he escalated all of the ones

we were already in and he's already doing that now we're bombing Yemen even more than we were He's threatening to ethnically cleanse and occupy Gaza, one of the many territories around the world that he plans to just steal from its inhabitants. And not only is he planning new wars, but he's paving the way for other authoritarian governments. So he's giving with his weak and feckless position on Ukraine, he's telling Vladimir Putin, like, hey, bide your time a little bit, and then you could utterly conquer Ukraine and probably other countries too. He already said within the last week that our, you know, our former guarantee that we would defend Taiwan and maybe not so much. So he's encouraging China to potentially start invading their neighbors. And all

of this is convenient for a couple of different reasons. First of all, I think he likes the idea that effectively you could have like a dark league of world dictators that carve the world up into individual slices that they each have utter control over. And even if, even if not that, it's very convenient that if your domestic policies are going to be wildly unpopular, Because all the economic damage they would do, if you plan for instance to maybe like hand five to ten trillion dollars over to America's billionaires, wouldn't it be great if you had a few more world conflicts to help distract people where you can easily cow Republicans into rallying around the flag and believing that for some reason us going to war with China is patriotic, then maybe they won't notice the stuff you're doing domestically. All of this is utter chaos, utter corruption. And so in that way, it's pretty, again, par for the course for Donald Trump. Trump's second term. But that said, we do need to take our first break. When we come back, lots more to talk about. When I hear Republicans out there talking about their plan for education in America, I don't

hear them talking about making sure disabled kids have access to a public education. I don't hear them talking about impoverished. Because we're against it. I know you are. Thank you for admitting it in such a public forum. They want to end up privatizing it. Yeah, that's gross. I mean, it's hardly out of the norm for the five. I mean, that one joke, I think it was Greg Gutfeld says he's as a comedian. I think that's the cover story. story, that's pretty much what he does. But like, it's true. You don't actually care.

I didn't see a lot of other people at the table saying, yeah, Jessica, you've got a good point. Hey, Greg, you're being unfair there. That's cruel. We pretend to be Christians. You're hurting our cover story. They didn't seem to have really any problem with that. And considering that Tarlov's comments come on the wake of Donald Trump killing the Department of Education, which is a prelude to throwing more of the responsibility for education back to the states, which some will be prepared to take up after a few incredibly difficult years of adaptation, perhaps. But others have never cared about public education. They have no interest whatsoever in spending money on that or providing oversight. They know that. Donald Trump knows that. The five knows that. But they are comforted by

the fact that no matter what happens and no matter what state you live in, their kids will be able to go to the best schools in the country. Their donors' kids will be able to go to amazing schools, Ivy League, indeed. They'll be fine. Those kids don't need the protections and oversight of the Department of Education. They're going to be just fine. Your kids, maybe not so much. And so we have more that we're to talk about. But I want to throw it to Yaz, feel free if you want to engage with Gutfeld or just the fact that they're effectively trying to largely wind down the Department of Education. What do you think about this? Yeah, yeah. You said it. Gutfeld is a, he's a, he's a, a joker, he's a comedian. That's just what he does. You know, we on the left, we don't know how to

take a joke. But the thing is, we've learned that oftentimes when they're joking about things, they're not joking. Like, they mean everything that they're saying. And the thing that they're joking about is something that is actively happening in this country right now. Donald Trump, another joker, he loves to make a joke. He is trying to dismantle and defund the Department of Education. If he gets his way, it will completely shrink to, I mean, basically just going to be there to manage student loans and Pell Grants and that kind of thing. But you know what? They're finally sending education back to the states, which is where I guess all of their supporters want education to be. But the thing is, the majority of Americans do not

support this move. We don't want to see the Department of Education gutted. Trump has already caught some backlash in his efforts to try to defund or dismantle the Department of Education because it's not so easy. It can't be done with just an executive order. has to go through legislation, through Congress, and all of that, because it is an executive level of department. But, you know, he's trying. And the fact that he's trying means that likely eventually he's going to get it done in some way, shape, or form. And it's very distressing because, you know, the states, I guess, you know, like maybe it is, it's better for smaller government, bigger government, whatever. That's always going to be an ongoing debate in this

country. But at the end of the day, like, if we're just kicking everything back to the states, If that's Donald Trump's explanation for everything that he does, for everything that he dismantles at the federal level, he's saying, oh, no, we're giving it back to the states where it belongs. What is the federal government going to be left with? It's just going to be our military, you know, unless we just have like state run militias after this, I don't know. Jordan. Yeah, I mean, what's the joke here?

You can have an offensive joke that picks fun or makes fun of a marginalized group. I'm not saying it's funny or acceptable, but it has to be structured like a joke. And Greg Gottfeld is supposed to be, what, the comedic relief on the five. But it seems like he just kind of sits there like this and then just says the most like offensive thing he can possibly think of without any real structure or thought. It's just, oh, wow, he's shocking. He went there. And in this context, it's just malice.

Like, that's all it is. There isn't a joke here. The punchline is that people who. who need help aren't going to get it and he's happy about it. Like, we're, the joke's on us, I guess, because these are people that we should take care of. They should have an equal opportunity or have some sort of infrastructure in the public education system to meet their needs.

And you just, no, I don't care. All right, you're just a, you're just a jerk. Like, that's all it is. Like, to Yaz's point, I think we might see pushback once people realize what it would look like without a Department of Education. I don't think a lot of people are going to want this once they see the consequences. Sadly, it might be too late. But especially on the right, everyone's wrapped up in this whole like, oh, they're doing DEI and cultural Marxism in our schools. And once they realize the eradication of the Department of Education and everything that comes along with it

is more than just top down policies on curriculum or how schools can't discriminate. It's a lot of funding. It's a lot of like individual needs being met through the government. Once they, I think we're going to see this and of course in the Department of Education, but as more and more agencies get heavily curtailed or completely eliminated, people are going to maybe finally realize what the government does for them. Sadly, I think it'll be too late. Yeah. I mean, look, if we want to jump into the former responsibilities of the Department of Education, there's a few categories. So managing federal funding. So again, none of these conservative pundits or politicians need that funding. They're all wealthy. They'll be perfectly fine. Plenty of conservatives out there, the voters, the MAGA voters, they need that funding.

Their kids are going to suffer. Their job prospects are going to be worse. Their life outlook is going to be worse. Maybe they'll see that maybe they won't. Enforcing civil rights law, of course, the elite Republicans don't give a damn about that. And this would be politically bad for them if, for instance, they in the last election were making a play to appeal to more black and brown voters. But obviously they weren't trying to do that. So utterly screwing over those students, I'm sure won't come back to bite them in the ass. Providing access for students with disabilities. I did Google it and conservatives don't have kids with disabilities. So I guess they'll be fine in that respect.

It shouldn't hurt them at all. And servicing more than $1 trillion worth of student loans, which they will continue doing. because of course, that's something you take from students rather than give two students, so they're perfectly fine with that. I mean, they're being super clear about what they think about America's kids the next generation. I will never understand how more young people weren't just enraged at the right, at the conservative of the Republican Party for the rest of their lives when over the last four years, Joe Biden finally did for students, to some extent, what we routinely do for wealthy people, canceling their debt, bailing them out.

And he canceled a bunch of the debt. And then Republicans around the country said, no, put it back on them. And they did that. And tens of millions are screwed for decades. And lots of them are Republicans. It's not just Democrats to go to college. And I guess a bunch of them are like, that's okay. You just piled my future with a mountain of debt. But I do like your position on trans people. So I guess that's okay. I'll never own a home. I'll never open a business and I can never afford to move, but I do like that somewhere there's a trans person I'll never meet that will never be able to play a sport they like. And by the way, that's what's driving most of their other talk about the funding for schools. Trump has already rejected hundreds of millions of

dollars of funding for multiple universities because they allow trans people to play sports. I mean, that is a level of identity politics and cancel culture that America has literally never seen before. And again, they're perfectly fine with that. And so look, a bunch of these states are now saying that in low income areas, in rural areas, they're going to have to massively scale back the provision of education because they relied on that federal funding. And that is some of it might still exist. But one of the issues is that not only is this going to be screwing over all these states, but it's also, as with everything else coming out of the Trump administration, It's super half-assed and vague and they have really no idea what this actually means.

They don't know what funding is still going to exist. And sure, that's screwing over some blue states, but there's a lot of like state legislatures in red states that have no idea what they're supposed to do about this because again, it's so vague. And so this is going to have massively negative outcomes. But I also think it's one of the things, and I'll toss it back to you guys, where the right wrecks things and then they use the fact that things are wrecked to argue for why you should put them in charge. So they are screwing over public education and in four years, they will use that as an excuse to just throw more money into private schools.

Rather than like reforming the Department of Education, providing more funding, listening to teachers, that sort of thing, they will instead use us as an excuse to put more funding into charter schools and that sort of thing. So I don't know. Jordan, I'll start with you. Where do you think we go from here? Yeah, you're seeing it across the board, John. Sean Duffy, who was the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, use that same argument, talk about these social security cuts. They're going to go after the program, break it, and then turn back to voters and be like,

it's broken. How did this happen? I guess we just have to privatize it. All of these, same thing with education. They want to privatize education. They want to establish a voucher system in charter schools because it allows people in their circles to get more and more wealthy. When you have people having to pay for education, then all of a sudden new crops of billionaires or current billionaires get even more wealthy. That's what the DeVos family, the former Secretary of Education stands to benefit tremendously if they're successful here. So that's what they're doing when they do this. They want to break something, go back to voter, say, oh, it's broken. us as we revamp the system. And that revamp system is something that was taken care of

by the government for you. As imperfect as it may be, now is an additional charge for you. Yeah. Yes. Faddle of us. Yeah, it's the same thing. But the Postal Service, healthcare, defense, education, they want to get money and government programs that benefit millions and millions of people don't make billionaires bigger billionaires, right? One thing I will say about the Republicans is to your point, Sean, is that like they know how to stick to a plan. They set on a strategy and they stick to it. They stay on message and they all get behind it, right? This demonization of education was such an easy cause for Republicans to take up because they already have the evangelical vote. And religious people, they love

to send their kids to private religious schools or just to homeschool them. So they already have like this base that doesn't trust the public education system. And on top of that, they have a lot of wealthy people who vote Republican and their kids go to private schools, maybe not religious ones, but they already don't trust the public school system. Here in Texas, Jordan kind of mentioned that our governor has been trying to push his corrupt school voucher program for years. And it hasn't quite gained the support he needs yet. But he recently is he started trying again. And he brought up the long debunked myth that there are litter boxes in classrooms and saying that, you know,

we have to go after the furries now. That is what the Texas government is doing. It's so much fun living here. Let me tell you. But on top of that, we have the issue with school shooters that they have done nothing about, right? It is literally, it's dangerous to send your children to public schools these days. And it's terrifying because you never know. Even if the odds are that your child won't get killed in a school shooting, the chance is still there. And the chance they're not doing anything to mitigate it, and they won't do anything to mitigate it, right? We're going to just keep having these same conversations over and over and over again for years, decades at this point, because they're not going to do anything about it.

So, yeah, John, to your point, they're going to do this now, and then four years from now say, look how bad it is, and use that as an excuse to gut it even further or completely dismantle it. They've already done that, right? They've been doing that to where we got to this point. But as I mentioned, the majority of Americans do not support this move. But, you know, that's the president that we have. He doesn't care. Once he's in office, he's going to do whatever he wants.

Yeah, and they might lose the midterms. They might lose the next presidential election. But at that point, they'll already have done tons of damage to the government, the entirety of it. And they'll have handed over trillions of dollars to the wealthiest people in the country. And you can't immediately take that back. They know that. Okay, we're going to take our second break. We come back.

Last one to talk about, including the future of the Democratic Party. Welcome back one and all lots more news to get to. Why don't we jump right into it? This isn't just about Republicans either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us too. So that is AOC criticizing the Democratic Party while participating in Bernie Sanders' fight oligarchy tour. She's saying that the sort of Democrats that are going to do well are the brawlers who actually stand up to and push back against the Republicans. And that certainly seems to be what the voters out there, both Democrats and independents, want to see. Interestingly, Bernie has a slightly different take, which we will get to. But you should

know that that rally like past instances of Bernie's rallies on this tour drew a lot of people. This is in Tempe, Arizona, hit 15,000 people, which is certainly a lot. And understand that while AOC and Bernie are drawing crowds, the Democratic Party in general is not doing well. Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings. It's their worst poll since Quinnipiac started back in 2009, hardly a good spot. Only four, 40% of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats compared to 49% who disapproved. Last year, 75% approved. So they have lost about half of those who approved of them. And we can sort of understand why. Now, some people are speculating that this could potentially create an opening like we saw during the Tea Party for the Republicans, where the frustration with the Republican Party gave way to a remaking of the party.

And if that were to happen, maybe it's more of in an AOC or Bernie Sanders direction. That said, when you poll, you know, potential voters, what do people think? Well, 45% of Democrats want their party to become more moderate, 29% more liberal, 22% stay the same. And that's the sort of graphic that, you know, we draw from articles like in Politico, that political will write and it's supposed to mean something. What the hell does that mean? When you poll thousands of people and some say they want the Democratic Party to be more moderate,

what does that mean? And do we think that means one thing? Do we think that people are thinking about the same sorts of policies when they say that? I hate terms like moderate. It is so pointless. On what? On economic policy, on combativeness, on culture, on foreign, but like it means basically nothing. But what we do know is that Democrats don't like the current Democratic Party and leadership. And obviously there's been a lot of criticism of Chuck Schumer in particular. Now, Bernie and AOC, they haven't actually asked him to step down, which I think is interesting. But a couple of House Democrats have. As I said, though, Bernie actually thinks that more people need to run as independence rather than as Democrats to remake the Democratic Party, which is obviously that's

more akin to what he has done historically, but it's a different strategy than AOC. Yeah, I'm going to go to you first. What do you think about these different critiques? Yeah, okay. So I swear, I did a video for Rebel HQ earlier today, and I almost said this. Like I got very right up to saying maybe there's like a split in the Dem party that no one's really talking about. I was talking about how the left doesn't have strong leadership right now. And I don't really see how it could. I don't know what a Democratic leader akin to what Donald Trump is to the Republicans could even, I don't even know if that is even possible for the left. What would that person even look like? What would they stand for?

There are so many issues that Democrats are split on. We're far to split out, we're spread too far across the political spectrum, first of all. But that aside, we're split between the Dem leadership and then also the Dem voters, right? The Dem leadership right now, they're courting big money donors, they're courting billionaires. They're becoming more corporatized. The Democratic voters really don't like that because our voice is being drowned out by these billionaires, which is exactly what has already happened on the right. They also are, there's a big split between what people think should happen between Israel and Palestine.

The voters think one thing and the government is really, really backing the other thing. And there's several other issues just like that. So whenever we talk about like a Democratic leader, someone's going to come who's going to take on Donald Trump or the whatever, whoever comes after him. I don't know what that person would even look like. We, the progressives, we have Bernie Sanders. and then arguably AOC would be his successor. But a lot of people don't like AOC for various reasons. And Bernie, the establishment doesn't like him.

So even if Bernie is like the most perfect candidate that we could ask for as progressives, he's not going to make it. He's tried several times that he wasn't able to make it because the Democratic establishment was anti-Bernie. And even within Congress, a lot of the things that he stands for, a lot of the things that he says, the other Democrats will either say, know we don't agree with that or they'll just stifle his voice. So we've seen it several several times before. It's not looking like it's getting any better. If anything, the party seems to be

splitting even more. And people are getting very, very frustrated because it feels like at this point, we have no representation in our own government, right? We have all these ideals and all these values. And there is so much public support behind these ideas. But whatever they do, once they get into Congress, is whatever they want to do. So they don't have to listen to us once they've already gotten our vote. And they've gotten our vote this, thus far, because, you know, we vote for the Democrats, because we keep thinking that, you know, if we get enough of them in Congress, then things are going to shift in our in our favor, shift one way that we would like it to shift. But that hasn't proven to be the case. Meanwhile, they keep texting us and asking us

for money because they need one more donation, you know, just to save democracy. My donation is going to save democracy. That's what they tell me in these text messages that they blow my phone up with. So it's very frustrating. It's very disingenuous. And it's also, it doesn't encourage me to want to participate in government in that way. Jordan. Yeah, on the Tea Party point, we have to recognize while there was discontent on the right, that was a well-funded, largely astroturfed movement. And we will not see the same money on the left to prop up something like this. While there are progressive advocacy organizations, their budgets pale in comparison to the Koch brothers who helped fuel that movement. And when you look at somewhat analogous movements over the past, say,

decade, you have the George Floyd uprising. What was that meant with? State violence. You have Occupy. What was that met with eventually? State violence. You're not going to be able to build something like that. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but you have to recognize. And then if we get to it later, but just generally Trump's comments about like the Gaza protests on college campuses. Yeah, deport them. We're going to put these people in jail. There's other movements happening right now. They're threatening to charge people with acts of terrorism. So it would be curious in this environment to see how a movement like that actually manifests and what it would be met with because people who are protecting the status quo will use all the tools at their disposal

to crush a populist movement in this country. And that includes the Democratic Party. leadership. But on those on that polling, I think it's important to point out, people are saying, oh, you know, I think the moderate direction is the right direction for the future. What is that, like you're saying, John, what does that mean? Can you name a single policy that Democrats are united around that defines the party? Because I can't. We couldn't even in the last presidential cycle, especially now. What do they stand for? You can't even get unified opposition to Trump passing a budget bill. Like, what are we doing? So there's an opportunity here. I'm glad to see A.O. C and Bernie are hitting the road, but they're filling arenas for these speeches and it shows

there's a demand for it. They want someone coming out and talking about these things. Rokana's doing a mini tour in California, TYT is going to be airing it this weekend. And you're seeing things like this start to pop up. But unless the whole party is behind it and leaning into it or most of the party, it's just going to be more of the same. You've got the progressive wing doing their thing. And then the rest of the Democrats are just going to continue protect in corporate interests. Yeah, the entire thing is utterly frustrating. And also, like, they should, they should, they should move to the center.

Yeah, if only the Democrats ran a presidential candidate who was really centrist. Mito mixed it up in that way. Stop with the radical commies. It's so frustrated with the media. And this guy, John Cusack, who's an actor with marginal success, is actually calling on March 29 to be the day to blow up Teslas and crock it too. Well, he should be indicted. Okay, so it is not enough for Brian Kilmead and for the right that anyone who has scuffed the paint, of one of Elon Musk's products be charged with terrorism and maybe shipped to a Salvador in prison. We'll get to that. Any person out there in politics or in pop culture, actors with

marginal success, what are you talking about kill me? They also should probably suffer some sort of state violence. And there his excuses, they're calling for them to be blown up. No, they're not. That's not remotely true. That is a vicious bit of slander against him and particularly against Representative Jasmine Crockett, who has been very specific that she supports nonviolent protest against Tesla. That's she said it over and over and over again. And just like when we hear on TYT say it, it's pointless. We never get any credit for the constant caveats and all that that we do. They just imply that she should probably go to prison too. And so that's what they're doing. To be fair, let's let's go to a little

bit of the actual raw video. So here is that marginally successful actor, Jesus, and Jasmine Crockett talking. Well, let me tell you, on March 29th, I want you to raise your voices all over the world, and I want you to be heard, heard in such a way that no matter how much they try to ignore you, they just can't. And what we are seeing is that because people are driving this movement. We've seen that now the board is saying, hey, Elon, you need to step aside because you're messing up everything. We saw here recently that Tesla is not being welcomed in Canada in Vancouver because they are afraid of what may come along with that. Musk is a pathological liar. He's a criminal. He's a sociopath and a ghoul. And I mean those terms very precisely.

because who else would use his own child as a sympathy prop while literally taking starving aid away from people all over the world. He's literally killing people. People are going to die because of this madness. Look, if you're on the right, you can not like what Crockett and Cusack said. I also would not want to be reminded that they're God emperors are these incredibly flawed people in basically every way. That doesn't make them terrorists. Again, like you not liking hearing a thing doesn't mean that the person that said it should be locked up. I understand that you free speech radicals have landed on that as the solution to all of your problems. But no, that's not actually how America is supposed to work. At least as of right now,

we have some rights. Not as many as some of us had when we were born. A lot of it's been dialed back by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, but we still have some. In any event, they called for nonviolent protest. And they are being constantly lied about by Kilmead, also by Marjorie Green, who took 14 seconds of video that Laura Lumer spread to make it seem as if Jasmine Crockett was saying that she wants Elon Musk to be physically taken out. Again, nonviolent, they constantly said it over and over and over again. Laura Lumer cut that out. She's a liar, obviously a propagandist. The actual website for the protest movement that they're doing the stream for

says they're a peaceful protest movement. They oppose violence, vandalism, the destruction of property. They're very clear about that, Very clear in a way that I wish the organizers of January 6 perhaps had been a little bit clear. We might have avoided a lot of problems in America. But again, they're all attacking them. And we can, as we go into our discussion, feel free to put up graphic three so you can see that. Donald Trump is in fact calling for the people who burned cars to disappear into the Salvadoran prison system. So Jordan, again, like if you speak up for peace, you're disappeared. if you criticize like any critics just they they just wants to lock up anyone for no matter how

small their infraction is what do you think yeah it's it's it would be funny if it wasn't so sad and you know the same situation over and over again i find myself in it's like does anybody care is is there anybody on the right with even the smallest amount of principles here Because they've treated free speech and their defense of it as like an aesthetic rather than an ideal. And you're seeing it here because these are just like unthinkably egregious violations of people's First Amendment rights. You don't like you're saying, John, you don't have to agree with this. But even some of the more radical right wing folks will still pretend like they care about freedom of speech. And sometimes they'll apply it to a liberal cause.

It's seldom few and far between. But this is like, we're going to deport you. We're going to send you to El Salvador if you damage a Tesla. Like this, and like this protest movement isn't even doing that. Maybe there are some saboteurs who are. The punishment is not deportation. It's ridiculous. It's pathetic to see how they want to try to reframe this movement as domestic terrorism.

And in other circumstances, you would say, well, with the government's meddling in private businesses. We saw that over Biden's term. We saw that for Obama's terms. Anytime there's a government involvement to try to prop up a business on the left or suppress a business interest on the left, they're up in arms. Well, the government should be meddling in free enterprise. Well, consumers are pushing back.

And now they're not allowed to do that. It's outlandish. It's ridiculous. On a lighter note, I think this is an opportunity for Mercedes-Benz to kind of break into that market. with a new slogan, Nazi cars that don't blow up. Under the Nazi bus immediately. Yes, what do you think? Yeah, first of all, an actor with marginal success.

Are you joking? Like, I'm offended on behalf of John Kusack. He's actually one of my favorite actors. I haven't seen all of his movies, but if he's in something, I'm much more likely to watch it. But the thing is, John Kusack is not bothered about anything that Brian Kilmead has to say about him. He's been speaking out against people like Donald Trump, and Elon Musk for years.

He's never incited violence, at least not as far as I've ever seen, nor has Jasmine Crockett. She told the people to raise their voices. How is that inciting violence unless their feelings are so sensitive that harsh words actually are sticks and stones to them? I don't know. Also, I just want to point out and clarify that the left did not start these fires. These were people who started the fires, right?

This is not some rally and call for all leftists to just go start fires and places. But this is incredibly serious. And Jordan's point about this being an aesthetic is so spot on. These people are patriots, right? How many times in the earlier story did they refer to Elon Musk as a real good, a great patriot, right? As long as you're a patriot, you're good, you're gold and you can't be touched. They bleed red, white, and blue. They love freedom and Jesus and Trump.

They're so American that it is their entire personality. And they drive their trucks around with these big American or maga flags on the back of them. Or maybe that's just me because I live. live in Texas and that's what I get to see. But until they're asked to think even somewhat critically about the actual constitution and the Bill of Rights, they're so American, but they can't comprehend that our government was founded on principles and ideologies and not just on what makes people feel good, right? And sometimes those principles, when you apply them in certain situations, they don't work

out for you and other times they don't. But there has to be some kind of moral benchmark or a baseline that you're operating from. Otherwise, you get what we're getting now with Donald Trump. If he doesn't like something, then it's illegal, right? People aren't buying Teslas, it's illegal that you're not buying a Tesla. Everyone needs to own a Tesla or else you're going to go to jail or something. I don't know, it just makes no sense. But the thing is, like it's so short-sighted because if they say, I don't like when the

Democrats do that, so that's illegal. But the thing is, they also want to do it, right? They want to do it whenever the favor has shifted towards them. So I don't know what the overall plan is here. I don't know if we're going to see people get thrown in jail or just speaking up, saying things that Trump just doesn't like to hear or Republicans don't like to hear. So I don't know what the end game is here. At this point, it could be anything, right?

Because we're seeing a lot of things happen that we never imagined would have happened. A lot of people, including us here at TYT, I feel like have been saying for a long time that this is where we're headed. But at the time, it was like, oh, you guys are being dramatic and that's not what's going to happen, blah, blah, blah. People don't believe anything until they actually see it in front of them. Then they're like, oh, how did we get here? Well, I'll tell you how we got here. Just go back a few months or a few years. Like, this has been the state of play for a very long time. This is what they were always working towards. And here we are. And now there's no rules, right? There's no

parameters that anybody can fall back on. The checks and balances that we used to be able to rely on are being dismantled themselves or they've become corrupted. And we've allowed them to become corrupted. And I don't know where we go from here. Sorry to end on such a dower note. Yeah, no, the entire, where we end is maybe people on the right being reminded that at one point they at least implied that they cared about rights and free speech and all that. And look, I know that you didn't want to end up in this, this dark place where most conservatives have been turned into the most pathetic and fragile snowflakes ever. It's like, it's just a trope now. Anyone disagrees with you deport them.

American citizens, deport them. Congress people speak out, deport them. Judges push back against Trump, deport them. They're American citizens, but no, you don't get to be. Not if you disagree with me. I think that conservatives have been put into this really weak and fragile place where they are everything that they used to pretend that like liberal arts students in the Ivy League were.

And they're being encouraged in this because they're thought leaders on the right. They're politicians, that's their reaction every time somebody pushes back. They have no durability, they have no adaptability. There's no argumentation, there's no debate anymore. And I mean that literally, you don't get to have a voice because if you do, and if it's not what the emperor says is politically correct speech, then they will ship you out. Again, the people they're talking about sending to El Salvador are not even migrants. That was already an insane thing that they were pushing.

These are just American citizens that they think your position as an American is contingent on doing things that I guess that Elon Musk approves of. I think that's a sad place and we're not going to be able to solve this problem for them. They're going to have to solve it for themselves. All we can do is stand up for the rights that Americans are supposed to have in any event. We don't have any more time. There's a lot more that I would love to say about that. There just isn't time. But thank you, Yaz, thank you, Jordan, to both of you for being here. It was a pleasure. And everybody out there, there's more to come in the second hour, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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Thank you.