The Young Turks - Pentagon Payouts

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Bowing to pressure, Biden relents on F-16s to Ukraine. "That’s a hell of an accounting error!" CNN’s Jake Tapper grills NSA Jake Sullivan on Pentagon’s "bizarre" discovery of $3 Billion in extra cash. NYC Mayor Eric Adams calls for an investigation into the false story of homeless veterans being displaced by immigrants. WATCH: Warner Bros. Discovery Boss David Zaslav gets brutally heckled during Boston University commencement. Fox News host Will Cain condemns people who don't want children as "selfish" for "focusing on their own needs and desires as opposed to those of perhaps a family." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! All right. Welcome to the M. Turch, Jake, Eurannick, Sparion on a lovely, fascinating Monday evening.

It's an okay evening. It's an okay evening, everybody. It's cloudy here in L.A. It's been freaking cloudy all spring long. I'm sick of it. Okay, I'm sick of it. All right, all this freaking overcast. Oh, it's going to burn off, except it never does. Like, what is this? Seattle? Portland? It's supposed to be L.A.

We didn't sign up for Seattle. No, we didn't. Sorry. Now that there's anything wrong we've said. All right, anyways, you guys get it. All right, guys, it's going to be an interesting show. And so, you know what, without further ado, let's just hit them. We're going to start off with some foreign policy, starting with this. President Biden has informed the G7 allies here that the United States has agreed to allow Ukrainian pilots to begin training to fly American-made F-16 fighter jets.

This move represents a major reversal for Biden. And a wish fulfilled for Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, who has pleaded for F-16s for months. Oh, goody, an escalation of war. Now, in this case, as you heard in that report, the Biden administration will now allow our European allies to transfer American-made F-16s to Ukraine, something that was considered a red line by the Biden administration previously, especially when we're dealing with another nuclear power, Russia. And of course, Vladimir Putin has responded to this by threatening nuclear war with the United States, which is unsurprising. It's not the first time he's done it. But, you know, maybe sending over offensive weaponry to Ukraine, not the best idea. And there is no end in sight for this war.

In fact, the idea of sending F-16s to Ukraine makes it abundantly clear that the United States and its allies intend to continue engaging in this war for at least 8,000. months, possibly more, because there's some training necessary in order to ensure that members of Ukraine's military are able to operate F-16s. We'll get to all those details in just a moment. Now, Ukrainian President Vladimir Selensky has been asking for F-16 since the beginning of this war in the United States. Under Biden's leadership, had refused to do so.

They saw it as an escalation of war. The next video has some more details on this. The F-16, the backbone of the U.S. air fleet, can travel twice the speed of sound, drop bombs on ground targets, and fire-air-to-air missiles. Ukraine believes these planes provide a distinct advantage in the skies, enabling them to shoot down incoming cruise missiles and fighter jets, fending off Russia's punishing air assaults. But up till now, providing F-16s has been a red line for President Biden,

reluctant to provoke an unpredictable escalation from Russia. Still, in a February interview with David, Biden did leave the door open just a crack. We know President Zelensky continues to say what he really needs are F-16s. Will you send F-16s? Look, we're sending him what our seasoned military thinks he needs now. You don't think he needs F-16s now? No, he doesn't need F-16s now. That was what he said in February, but clearly he has now changed his tune.

Now, for the moment being, there's no indication that the United States is going to transfer its F-16s to Ukraine. It's just that our allies will be doing so. But let's keep it real. Eventually, the United States will be doing so as well because it's an opportunity for, we know what it's an opportunity for. Send them more weapons that creates a need for the United States to replenish its weaponry. And that means more money for the defense contractors who are absolutely salivating over this war that is now quickly becoming an endless war. And I'll explain more of that in just a moment. But, Jank, I wanted to give you an opportunity to jump in.

Yeah. So, guys, the administration is partly worried about it because it's an escalation. I would say that's the minority concern. They're not really talking about the majority concern, which they mentioned in some articles, but they mentioned it in passing as if it's the smaller concern. I don't think so at all for reasons I'll explain here. The larger concern is they don't want the technology to fall into the wrong hands, mainly the Russian hands, because it's one thing for the Ukraine's have an F-16, it's another thing for an F-16 to get shot down in area controlled by Russia, where they can then just take

the F-16 and reverse engineer it, right? And so now you might think, well, okay, that's a real national security issue for us, because F-16s are excellent, and it's a rare thing we do right in the U.S. in terms of technology, and so that could be a national security problem for us. Yeah, maybe that's a little bit of a concern too. But the larger concern is the people that sell the F-16 don't want anyone else to be able to produce cheaper F-16s without going through them, i.e. the defense contractors. You know what? That is the most important part of the story, guys.

I mean, God forbid that these defense contractors, these military, I mean, I'm sorry, these military-grade weaponry manufacturers have some competition. I mean, that's the real war. We should be concerned about, Uyghur. Exactly, but isn't it interesting that the media doesn't mention that? No, it's not interesting. It's the most expected part of this story, imaginable. Yeah.

Oh, by the way, we went through the same thing with the M1 Abrams tank earlier in this war. And so the defense contractors are super nervous about their beloved technology, which they have now, you know, taking billions, if not trillions of dollars off the hands of U.S. taxpayers and taxpayers in Northern Europe, et cetera, that technology falling into hands that would allow them to not have a monopoly on those weapons, okay? And so that's the iceberg of this story that no one else is talking about. By the way, also true of the so-called pending on accounting error that you might have heard about. We're going to talk about that later in the show. Now, John Kirby, who's a spokesperson for the White House, sat down with

sat down for an interview about this new decision to allow for F-16s to be sent to Ukraine. And the big question is, you know, doesn't the Biden administration see this as an escalation of war? Why the 180 on this topic? Well, he claims no, no, not at all. Let's watch. Just a short time ago, the Kremlin responded calling this a, quote, colossal risk. President Biden's concern from the very beginning with providing F-16s was that it could potentially escalate this war. What assurances does the U.S. have from Ukraine that they won't use these F-16s to fire into Russia that could widen this war? I will tell you, Peter, we have had multiple conversations with the Ukrainians about the risk of escalation here. Nobody wants to see World War

3. And we have made it clear that we're not going to encourage or enable Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory. Now, the Ukrainians have been very honest with us and very forthcoming and quite frankly, very responsible when it comes to the kind of support we're giving them, not using that to go inside Russia. Cool, I'm sure Ukraine would never do any type of offensive attack or would never even consider attacking Russia. Yeah. Except here's a story that broke today.

Ukrainian official confirms group of Ukraine-allied Russians crossed into Russian territory and attacked town. Let me give you some more context. But before I do, Jenks, seems like you have some thoughts on this. I do. Listen, guys, the Ukrainians are not going to want to violate an agreement with America because America could cut off further weapons, et cetera, that they need. So would they attack the Russians right away? No, unlikely with the F-16s.

But it depends on how desperate they get. So let's say they think that we're not going to send them any more aid, which is a possibility at some point. They think, well, we already have the F-16s. And understand why they might want to use them inside Russia, because Russia is firing missiles at Ukraine from inside Russia. And the only way to stop those is to bomb them inside Russia. So it only depends on how desperate the Ukrainians are. Once they have them, they have. So can we just at least be blunt about how this is an escalation of war?

Come on, Jank. It is. No, I don't. You really think Ukraine is under the impression that if they violate any agreement with the United States, that the United States would stop sending them weapons? Are you insane? No, no. Come on.

And look, there's a reason why we would care in it. You know, a day we don't want instability because that could affect the stock market. So it's not like we have any pure motives, but we do have motives for not escalating past this. But this is definitely an escalation. And by the way, don't get me wrong. Will we escalate even further? It's enormously possible. This is a disaster.

But guys, there's the theater. as always, and the real world as always. And the theater is, my God, we care about those brave Ukrainians. And is there some truth to that? Yeah, I think there's some truth to that for some people, right? But that's mainly the theater. When you get to the real world, the real world is how much are people going to make off of it? And so it's not just the defense contractors, it's also the oil and gas industry.

And we cut off the Russians gas supply into Europe. Now we're replacing their supply. So and then there's the banks who gambled on the gas and there's the banks who gamble on the defense contractors. So there is a world like billion, probably hundreds of billions of dollars here on not probably, definitely, on the line for all those different industries. And they're constantly sending lobbyists to talk to politicians, including the White House, lobby, lobby, lobby to make themselves more money. They don't care about our interests, the Ukrainian interests, et cetera. and that is what's driving a lot of these decisions while the press puts on a play about humanitarian this, you know, America's worried about escalation that, when in reality

most of the decision makers are worried about how much money everybody's going to make. Let's discuss the decision maker, shall we? Namely, the national security advisor who played a key role in persuading Joe Biden to allow for the transfer of the F-16s to Ukraine. And that person's name is Anthony Blinken. Now, what was Anthony Blinken up to after he was advising the Obama administration on foreign policy in Afghanistan? you know, the same foreign policy that extended and expanded upon Bush-era trash foreign policy. What did he do after that, right? That little space in time where it was between Obama and now the Biden administration.

Humanitarian workers, my guess. No, no. Working with a homeless. No interest in that. In fact, he was part of a consulting group specifically having to do with getting defense contractors in the same room as government officials. No, really? In essence, lobbying for defense contractors between government jobs at State Department? Huh, well, golly, gee, I bet this is giant news to the people in Washington,

and the reporters are going to clamor to cover this obvious conflict of interest. So as Washington Post reported, let's go to Graphic 5 here, Blinken played a similar role when NATO was at an impasse over whether to provide modern tanks to Ukraine. At the time, Germany was hesitant to approve the transatlantic. of Leopard 2 tanks, a roadblock that was overcome when Blinken pushed the White House to approve the transfer of M1 Abrams tanks over Pentagon reluctance. Now prior to Blinken serving as Secretary of State for Biden's administration, Blinken ran a defense-related consulting firm known as West Exec.

In fact, when Biden tapped him to be part of his administration, I remember researching this and writing a piece on this because I thought that there was, you know, some conflicts of interest here. And surely with the development of this war in Ukraine, the conflicts of interest are pretty brazen and pretty obvious. So Westexec did not respond when asked for a list of its clients. But according to people familiar with the arrangement, they include Shield AI, a San Diego based company that makes surveillance drones, and signed a contract worth as much as 7.2 million with the Air Force to deliver artificial intelligence tools to help drones operate in combat missions. Blinken and Michelle Flournoy, another person who is close with Biden, have served as

advisors to Pine Island Capital, which raised $218 million for a new fund to finance investments in military and aerospace companies, among other targets. So Blinken has a history of working on behalf of defense contractors and getting them sweet, sweet deals with the federal government. And that's that's exactly what I see here. I see this as an opportunity to make money for these defense contractors. It's pretty disgusting because I don't trust, I mean, do we really trust the Pentagon when they can't even pass a single financial audit? They haven't passed one. Do we really have trust and faith in them in regard to where the military weaponry is ending up? Do they have a full accounting of it? No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous.

Okay. And so all of this is to enrich those folks. But guys, at the same time, the Ukrainians should get our help. And the Russians definitely invaded them and they were definitely wrong. And it is definitely an imperial exercise. And so we're stuck in the middle ground here where we want to help good people like us want to help the Ukrainians. Okay, then push to peace talks. Without without getting robbed in the process. Yeah, peace talks. Okay, we don't actually, the United States government isn't actually interested in ending the war. Let's be 100% honest about that.

Well, that's definitely true because they're not encouraging peace talks because that is not in the Ukrainian interest, if you ask me. And the reason is that the U.S. has a separate interest is because the longer the war goes, the more Russia is depleted. And, you know, from our national security interests, the people in charge want Russia as depleted as possible. So it's a proxy war, and we're not the ones that are directly involved, Russia is, they're the ones that are getting weaker and weaker and weaker as their military gets depleted and run into the ground. And even if they quote unquote win and get parts of Ukraine, still their military will have been devastated. Their pipelines will have been shut down. Or blown up. Yeah. Yeah, or blown up. And that literally happened. And it's probably one of our

allies, if not us directly. And so we will take advantage of all the things that happen because of the war. And so it's, but that puts good people in the same basket as people who have no interest in humanitarian issues and are just trying to make a buck off this. And it's an uncomfortable basket to be in. And keep in mind that this is solidifying the alliance between Russia and China. So while this is a proxy war and the thinking among the state department is that this is weakening Russia, it is also strengthening its relationship with China. I should also note that China happens to be one of the countries that is pushing for peace talks. But the United States, because of its interest in wanting to weaken Russia, is really

unwilling to push for that. The other thing I wanted to mention is that the United States intends to continue this war for at least 18 months, if not longer. If you don't believe me, take a look at this final video. President Zelensky has been begging for them for more than a year. President Biden has resisted until this point. So what changed? Nothing changed. I mean, we have been evolving our support for Ukraine as the war has evolved.

And when we're talking about fighter aircraft, that's really not designed to help us in the immediate future here with the counteroffensive. The training of loan, John, could take 18 months of the defense secretary. Well, that's an initial estimate. As the war has evolved, we've also started to have conversations. with the Ukrainians about long-term defense needs. Because when this war is over, whenever that is and under what conditions, they're still going to have a long border with Russia. They're still going to need significant defense support.

So at least 18 months, just to train the soldiers in Ukraine how to use the F-16s, at least 18 months. So no end in sight. Let's just be absolutely clear about that. And in those 18 months, I'm just curious, how many times does the Biden administration intend to tap Congress to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars more to assist in the war effort in Ukraine. Yeah.

Well, by the way, simultaneously nickel and dime the American people, right? Right now, Biden is engaging in negotiations with Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling, and he is seriously considering work requirements for Americans who are so poor, who are so poverty stricken that they would need to prove that they're looking for. for work or engaging in work in order to get welfare benefits that they clearly need because they're struggling financially. So nickel and dime the American people continue this now new endless war with, you know, Russia, it's a proxy war.

It's just, I don't know. I think that the way the US has now decided to handle this is pretty disastrous and continues to get worse. So some estimates have them being trained by the fall, it's impossible to know. But the bottom line is, Ukraine is doing a spring and summer offensive, they will definitely the F-16s will definitely not be ready by that offensive. But I also want to temper your expectations there because I see a ton of BS in the mainstream media, honestly nothing but BS in that regard.

Why, if you are new to politics and news and you didn't follow what happened during the Iraq war, Afghanistan, et cetera, you might not know that whenever the New York Times starts writing about a new offensive and around the corner after that, we're going to win the conflict. that is untrue 100% of the time. I heard that same story in Iraq, I don't know, 80 times. Oh, a new offensive and then we're going to end the insurgency right after that. It never ends, it just goes on and on and on forever for decade after decade. And every time the Pentagon says us or our allies are doing a surge and we're going to win right after the surge,

It is literally never, ever true, okay? So don't buy that load of crap. And then the last point is, so as you saw them there, well, even after the war, we're going to have to keep sending them weapons. In other words, we found a nice little piggy bank here. And we're going to turn this into one way of looking at it as Israel, where we're just going to give them billions of dollars in defense spending paid for by the American taxpayer.

Great. And going straight to defense contractors who one day will probably hire me for millions. of dollars, oh, that's the part of the sentence he didn't complete, but is also definitely true. Which is great, you know, because the U.S. economy is dealing with a surplus right now. Just a wonderful surplus, and we have unlimited resources to spend on forever wars. Great. Anyway, we're going to talk about a cute little accounting error that the Pentagon has admitted to when we come back from the break. All right, back on TYT, Arley Bird 42 has gotten a worm and giving it to you guys,

gifting a Young Turks membership. That was an interesting analogy. We appreciate members looking out for one another. And you could join through the join button. You could also upgrade through the join button below the video. watching on YouTube and everybody else, of course, t-y-t.com slash join. You know it. Casper. Well, the Pentagon is fessing up to an accounting error, which shouldn't be surprising considering they can't even pass a single audit. One of the hardest parts of getting

older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight,

77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. But with that said, let's give you the details on that story. There was this very bizarre mission from the Pentagon this week of an accounting error that suggested that the U.S. has at least $3 billion that it didn't know it had that it can use for. Ukraine aid. That's a hell of an accounting error. And it provides a lot of fodder to critics of U.S.A. to Ukraine and critics who say there's not enough oversight going on.

Jake Tapper grilled National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan about the Pentagon's recent claims that an accounting error has freed up at least $3 billion worth of weaponry that could be sent to Ukraine in its war with Russia. Now, let's hear how the so-called error allegedly happened in the first place. Are you concerned about this accounting error? Well, one thing I just want to make clear, that is not money that went out the door and disappeared. That is not a waste of that $3 billion. It is simply a tally of how much military equipment we have given them. And the way that the Pentagon was counting it was, what's the replacement cost for the equipment we provide rather than just the actual cost of that

equipment? Once you make that adjustment, it turns out we have an additional $3 billion that we can spend to provide even more weapons to Ukraine. And at the end of the day, not one penny of U.S. dollars will have gone missing or have been misallocated. It will all be provided in the form of equipment to Ukraine on the battlefield. field. The Pentagon can account for a ton of money that they've been given by Congress. We'll get to that in just a moment. But to give you an example of what he's referring to in the way things were calculated and why this accounting error happened in the first place. The Wall Street Journal wrote that, for example, the Pentagon overstated the cost of replacing

the M777 howitzers. It provided to Ukraine by looking at the price tag on the himers or Himmars mobile missile launcher system, a far more advanced system slated to succeed the older artillery pieces in the U.S. arsenal. Overall, that cost difference resulted in an overcounting of $75 million, a Pentagon official said. Yeah. So let me tell you why this is a disaster for the U.S. taxpayers and why it's not at all in accounting error. It's a decision they're making so that they will quadruple the profits of the defense contractors. So how? Very clear. Okay. So let me explain it this way. And let's use hypothetical numbers. We know that the $3 billion is the number that they're talking about. But I'm going to give hypothetical

numbers for the rest. So originally in this hypothetical, the Pentagon says, okay, we're going to give $6 billion to Ukrainians. What is it paid for? Okay. So let's say, this hypothetical that it pays for a hundred howitzers. That's not the actual price obviously, okay? Well, now when they go, oh wait, we were pricing them at what we would need to pay to get those hundred howitzers. But what we really should do is price them at the howitzer's current value, because we're not giving them the new howitzers, we're giving them the old ones that we had in stock.

And those are not worth six billion dollars, they're worth only three billion dollars. Boom, we save $3 billion. So now instead of giving them 100 howitzers, we can give them 200 howitzers. But wait, that is not the replacement price. We're going to have to pay the replacement price because we're going to replace them for our stock. Now when you go to replace them, not only are they $6 billion, the actual original price that they calculated, but now we've given twice as many to the Ukrainians. So now they're going to have to charge us $12 billion.

So it's, because we're going to be buying in that hypothetical 200 howitzers at the new price, not the old price, okay? So that means the defense contractors are not going to get $3 billion. They're going to get $12 billion. Oh, thank God. Okay. So that's why they, oh, golly, gee, we notice an accounting error that would quadruple our profits. I mean, I mean, the defense contractor profits, I mean, we don't care about that.

We're just doing this for the Ukrainians. So that's how this game is played. It's also worth noting just to respond to some of what Sullivan said in that video, that the Pentagon doesn't seem to have the ability to account for much of their funding. In fact, they can't pass a single, literally they have failed every single audit that has been done. So the Pentagon, which has an annual budget of about $860 billion has long been plagued by county errors and has never had a clean department-wide audit, most recently failing an external study by multiple firms last year. Mike McCord, who serves as the Pentagon's Comptroller, I mean, this admission was so incredible, right? because he wanted to downplay it.

He's the controller for the Pentagon. And he's like, it's not really that big of a deal. Okay, guys, let's just all relax. He says, quote, I would not say that we've flunked. We have very big numbers here at the Department of Defense. So we can have numbers that may look big that are still quite accurate. Yeah, that doesn't mean anything. What?

Okay, that means yes, we did flunk, but we flunk that's such a spectacular. really large number that you shouldn't worry about it because it's buried in an even larger number. It's like waste within waste. It's like one of those Russian dolls of waste. So since that overall number is so gigantic, eh, don't worry about it. It's the world's worst explanation. Like they're not even trying. No, no, not. I mean, it's laughable because we have no say. So he can insult the American people with a statement like that and what power do we have. Yeah. Would say do we have, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Yeah, so everything is about concerted media battles, being honest with you guys. So if you're a progressive, what you should do with that? And Rokana and Bernie Sanders, they chip away at it and they talk about defense when they talk about the debt ceiling things. They never win, right? But how would you even have a fighter's chance of winning? Well, what you would do is you would figure out, okay, how much did the audits say we're missing? So it's going to be a giant number, 100 billion, 200 billion, but let's take a simple, 100 billion, okay, out of the 860. Say, hey, listen, it looks like you guys are wasting $100 billion, because you can't even account for it.

I mean, that's just beyond outrageous. By definition, waste, if you don't know where it went, right? So we're going to cut the defense by $100 billion until you can tell us where it's going, okay? And so because we don't, it's one thing to spend it on weapons. It's another thing to just throw it in the garbage, okay? Now, they can do a concerted effort on that and just pound away at Republicans. They're throwing $100 billion in the waste. They're ruining the deficit.

They're ruining the debt. They're ruining the economy. Where's $100 billion? It coordinated, you all go on TV at different times, et cetera. But there's no one planning anything on the progressive side. So they're not going to do that. Corporate Democrats, just like 80, 90% of the party agree with the Republicans. They all have the same lobbyists from defense contractors.

So they're just going to laugh at us. They're all going to laugh at us as they waste hundreds of billions of dollars and go, yeah, I don't know where it went. Yeah, but we're wasting so much money. Who cares? And the press will barely notice and the march will and the ban will march on. Now finally, the United States approved a whopping $113 billion in funding for Ukraine in 2022 alone. There are reports, you know, kind of bragging about how no new money was appropriated recently.

for instance, fresh funding for Ukraine wasn't included in the Pentagon's budget request for the fiscal year of 2024, which begins October 1st. Department officials and defense contractors had expected funding to come from a separate supplemental request this summer and hinge on the progress of any Ukrainian offensive. It will not hinge on that at all. There will be more money. There's definitely going to be more money. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Great. Oh, by the way, though, during the death ceiling negotiations, They'll cut all the money that was going to you guys. Yeah, notice not a single, not one Republican from the House who's currently making a big to-do about the government's budget and all the deficit, the debt. Oh my God, we need to cut spending. Not unwilling to cut any spending on defense. Not only that, they're also unwilling to raise tax on the rich by $1.

That's their red line, protect the rich at all costs. And yet, what do you see all over mainstream media? about how the Democrats and Republicans, golly, gee, they're all, they all care so much about the debt and the deficit, except they only want to take it from you and never from the powerful and from the lobbyists. All right, let's move on. Big correction on a story we covered on Wednesday, and this one has a lot of twists in turn, so buckle up.

Stories about how homeless veterans are being displaced by migrants. Is that true or is that false? It is really troubling. I'm asking our local and state authorities to investigate what happened here. It was clearly fabricated, and it was a conscious decision to fabricate it from what we are getting. New York City Mayor Eric Adams says that the claims regarding veterans getting displaced from housing by migrants in homeless shelters and other housing was completely made up. In fact, even Laura Ingram, of all people, made a correction in regard to that story on Fox News. Let's take a look at that.

A little update on a story we brought you this week. about homeless vets being displaced from hotels so that illegals could move in, turns out the group behind the claim made it up. We have no clue as to why anyone would do such a thing but we'll bring you any updates should they come. Now we're gonna get to the group that made it up particularly one nonprofit and one specific individual who went to great lengths to not only make up that story but to make up evidence for proving what her claims were. But before we get to that, Eric Adams is calling for something to be done. Let's take a look at what he says here.

Those who put together this scheme and put together this plan to really put a negative light on what we coordinated to do to send migrants throughout the entire state, a real decompression strategy. And I think that decompression strategy should be throughout the entire country at all. But we've never displaced veterans. Someone fabricated that story and it was blasted across our local tabloids and papers. And it's really unfortunate that someone would do something like this. Not only is it disgusting and unfortunate, I mean, you don't need to make up something like that to push for, let's say, resources in some of the cities where migrants are being sent to. These cities are struggling with lack of resources to deal with an influx of migrants coming to their cities.

cities, and I think the federal government needs to do something about that. But before we get to the person who lied about this and the extreme lengths in which she went to in order to lie about this, I wanted to get your thoughts, Jake. Yeah, there's a shocking twist in the story, and you saw half of it. One is that a Republican legislator got really mad that he got tricked by this right wing organization, and he's part of the folks who exposed it. And then Fox News, you saw their retraction. I'm totally shocked by that.

Me too. Because there are false stories like this in right wing press nonstop. There's just a giant pipeline of total BS that they make up 24-7 that goes right on to Fox News. No one cares. No one ever corrects anything. The Republican legislators are in on it. They love the BS and they press the BS forward, et cetera. So for a legislator to go, hey, you know what?

It turns out this was a lie and I don't like the lie, even though it helps me politically. So I'm going to expose it. I was like, I haven't seen that in like decades. And partly I think it's because it's at the local level. At the national level, they do this stuff on a regular basis. And so Project Veritas will edit videos in the old days completely out of context. They'll target a certain group. The Republicans will use it knowing that it's totally BS and they'll crush that group.

They'll strip it over all its funding. The Democrats will go along. That's how this game is usually. Fox will all hype it up knowing that it's total BS. I don't know if the Dominion lawsuit affected Fox at all in this regard. But this is pretty unprecedented for the right wing to go, yeah, sorry, we were making that up. Because that's what they usually do and never admit. And look, I don't think Fox News had any role in making this story up.

The heart of this is one woman who runs an organization, a nonprofit, who lied to everyone and even used homeless people to push the lie. So I'll get to that detail in just a moment. But first, who am I talking about here? Well, Sharon Tony Finch, the CEO of the nonprofit Yerick Israel Tony Foundation, said that homeless veterans under its care had been kicked out of upstate hotels to make room for migrants, bust from New York. York City. But the story has fallen apart, culminating with state assemblymen, and this is who Jenk was talking about, Brian Mayer, or Mar, who's a Republican, who had been advocating for the veterans in national media and in the state legislature, denouncing it as false in a call with the Times Union. So Times Union debunk the story, and they did so with the help

of this Republican Assemblyman in New York. And so here's how he was duped. So at a Wingate Hotel in Fishkill, Marr spoke with two people claiming to be veterans who were displaced from the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, which has received 110 migrants sent by New York City. Now, he even spoke to a purported driver who transported the displaced vets. However, here's what actually turned out, happened. One of the purported veterans told a reporter that he had been recruited to take part in a scheme designed to perpetuate Tony Finch's story. Three men currently staying at a homeless shelter said they were among a group of 15 people

recruited to portray homeless veterans displaced from upstate hotels by incoming migrants. So Marr started to get a little suspicious about this story. And he was like, look, I need some evidence that your nonprofit was actually paying to house homeless veterans. Like, let's start with that, provide some evidence of that. So at that point, Tony Finch goes to the bank with him. He's in his car waiting outside the bank, allegedly for three hours. And she comes out and provides the evidence.

And this is what the evidence look like. Okay? So it looks like a bank statement. Let's go to graphic four. and when he provides that evidence to his colleagues, they're like, I don't know, that kind of looks like it might be digitally manipulated. By the way, why was he waiting outside of the bank for three hours? It doesn't take that long to get financial documentation proving that you are paying for the shelter for these homeless veterans. Nonetheless, he- I just got to jump in for a second, Anna.

So it's actually two different things. So first he asked for evidence. She said, sends what looks like that doctor credit card, they go, hey, you know, this is, his staffers go, this doesn't look real. You should go and get actual receipts with her from her bank. That's when he waits three hours in front of the bank. And she never even shows because she don't have the receipts. No, no, no. My understanding was that he waited outside of the bank for three hours the first time. The second time he goes, thinking that she's going to show up to the bank, but then she just never does. It doesn't matter. There were two different occasions in which he demanded evidence.

The first time, this is what she provided in the form of evidence. The second time, she just didn't show up to the bank. Yeah, that's definitely right. Yeah, so basically she was a liar, according to Marr, quote, she alluded to the fact that, quote, maybe it's not exactly how I said it was. So she lied. And not only did she lie, she used homeless people to pretend to be veterans in order to push this lie. Yeah, but you know, she probably has to be stunned thinking, I'm the one right winger.

They're going to call out on a lie. I thought I was doing my job. My job is to make up a story. Then the Republican legislator picks it up. And then Fox News calls it official because the Republican picked up to mention the story. And then everybody thinks that there's litter boxes in every high school because the kids are getting dressed up as cats and they're all furries, right? This is how we make things up.

Now all of a sudden, I'm the bad guy. What the hell? Why'd you turn on me? Is my guess as to what happened in her mind? Like, because this is kind of what they do 24-7. So, but again, I'll credit where credit is due. So to that Republican legislator in New York, thank you for caring about the truth and thank you for representing your party well. Like this is the first time I've seen a Republican be honest in like I said, like decades. So hey, that's a tiny bit of hope. And look at Fox News correcting something. Like we correct stuff all the time. That's not new because a lot of times people in the press get it wrong and then it comes to us. And then, and you know,

a lot of that, we sniff out. We're pretty good at sniffing it out on this show. Even, yeah, but this, even this, like on Wednesday, you weren't on the show that day. You know, I was covering the migrant crisis and a lot of these cities are struggling, right? This was a tiny part of that story. Yeah, totally. Yeah, we got to correct it. But I can understand why people would fall for it, you know? Yeah, I totally get it. And so my point is, like, a, normal news organization when something gets an update and you realize, oh, that's not exactly how it was portrayed before you come in. You say, hey, guys, we want to make sure you know the real story and you correct it. But Fox, they are not well known for that, to say the least.

So now after the Dominion lawsuit, here they are correcting a right wing story that turned out to be BS. That's an interesting development. So there's a silver lining in this story. All right. It's graduation season, which means we've got some fun. culmination speeches to get to, including one featuring the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery. Come right back. We'll share that and more. Jankana, with you guys, mornings. Well, let's go to this next story. Mr. President, I have the honor to present David Zasloff for Boston University's

honorary degree. The Warner Brothers Discovery CEO, David Zasloff, was the commencement speaker at Boston University. And when he took the stage, as you can see in that video, some people not too happy about it. And it has a lot to do with the ongoing writer's strike, which has been ongoing for the last three weeks. Now, we have some more fun clips to get to and also some photos from the commencement to also show you. But first, we need to just back up a little bit and tell you a little bit about how Boston University could, you know, not have picked a worse speaker at this moment considering the writer's strike. So the writer's strike officially started on May 2nd. Just two days later, Boston

University announced that Zazlov was their commencement speaker. Now Zazlov is getting a lot of pushback because of the writer's strike, because of what his pay is compared to what writers make. So for instance, he made almost 250 million in 2021 alone. A lot of that, meaning 200 million worth of that 250 million, was in the form of stock options, which is usually how incredibly and fabulously wealthy people get paid. That's how a lot of executives get paid. And side note, part of the reason why is because it encourages them to cut costs, meaning costs associated with labor to increase profits. And when you increase profits, the value of the shares of that stock goes up and he gets paid more as a result. So that's, you know, it's an incentive to cut

costs, especially when it comes to labor. Now, most Americans do in fact support the writer's strike. So the studios might not, but the American people do. For instance, according to reporting for more perfect union, overall 71% of Americans with an opinion back the writers in their dispute. The survey indicated that the dispute has high visibility with the public, with more than 80% of Americans polled saying they had an opinion on the ongoing strike. The poll found overwhelming support for the strike that cuts across racial, gender, age, and even political lines, even 63% of Trump voters with an opinion on the strike do in fact back the writer's efforts, while 37% of those same Trump voters back the studios instead.

And that's, of course, represented by the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers. Okay, so that's a little bit of background. By the way, guys, don't be surprised that Trump supporters would be in favor of labor-related efforts. A lot of them are workers themselves. We need to stop pretending as if we don't share anything in common. But that's a side note. Now, before I get to some of the fun videos and pictures from the response to Zazlov, what do you think, Jake? Yeah, so look, your company does well. You get rewarded in stock options, et cetera.

I don't have that much of a problem with it. The question is, how did you get there? And so if you're doing it by just cutting employees when you don't need to, that's a different question. And in this case, they're in the middle of a strike. And the workers are asking for $429 million more per year. And that's a small slice of the profits, right? And in the media industry, there is tremendous profit, generally speaking. And the industry is offered, counteroffered 86 million. The reason I'm

giving you those numbers is because remember, and by the way, I have a different number than you do on Zaslov's salary from the last two years. And it's probably because of differences in the stock prices, et cetera. And so in my source, it's at 286 million over the last two years. So let's be fair to the guy and say, and divide that by two. And say, he's, averaged over 140 million in those two years. That's already more than what they're offering the writers. Just one person. One CEO out of the entire industry.

If they just took his salary and gave it to the writers, they'd already be nearly doubling what they're offering the writers today. They give you a sense of context for when they say, oh, we golly, gee, we just don't have the money for it. Okay, just to give you a sense of what kind of person's Zasloff is? I didn't know about this. He apparently just scrapped a movie that was already completed, totally finished, the Batgirl movie.

He scrapped it for a tax deduction, a write-off. Did you know that? Yeah, I did know that. So look, guys, there's a larger story of why they're doing all this cost cutting in the first place. And that's a super interesting story. So, but I want to get to that after we show you what they did to this guy. And I love what he was talking about when they started booing him. And I want to talk about that too.

So let's go to the videos, then I'll give you the host. All right. So there were two instances in which they started booing him, like very aggressively. And one of the times had to do with his statements about, you know, he's like complaining about how difficult his life was as a lawyer. Let's watch. You've got to figure out what you're good at and what you love doing. I graduated from law school right here at BU.

And I got what I thought was everything I want. I got a job at a big prestigious firm in New York, an apartment in New York, and I was making good money. I was feeling really great. He just, I just get, he's so out of touch. Like, that's the thing. You're so out of touch and he doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. Times have changed and he still thinks that it's like pimper.

my ride time and like, you know, what was the other MTV show where they would like go to people's houses and it was like, oh, look at my nice house. Cribs. Like that era is gone, okay? People are freaking struggling. Those college students, their future is so uncertain and so unstable. And the home boy is like, oh, I was a lawyer and I was living the good life. I had that apartment in New York. Like, shut up. So the whole speech was like that. And it's funny you said that he was out of time because I out of touch out of touch with the times right you're right he was he did seem out of time when he's out of touch you're out of touch or time right yeah nobody saw that coming so he's out of touch I thought as I watched the speech

this is a good speech from like 1986 1994 in that ballpark right this is all the graduation speeches from that era where they would come they'd be like well I had this spectacular job coming out of the prestigious school I came out with this one right and then I got I decided to turn it down to pursue my passion but it turned out I got an even more spectacular job and then I got 286 million dollars because I was so spectacular and in the middle of it he was telling a story and that's another point where he started getting booed about how Jack Welch where he used to work for the legendary businessman Jack Welsh who ran GE etc and he's like and Jack calls me in his office and he tells a story about office politics

Oh, I think we have that video. I think it's the next one. Let's watch you. If you want to be successful, you're going to have to figure out how to get along with everyone. And that includes difficult people. Some people Some people will be looking for a fight.

But don't be the one they find it with. But don't be the one they find it with. Focus on people's good qualities. God, it's, I have to be honest. I mean, and you can hear the people chanting, pay the riders. Excellent, okay. But at the same time, I will say, I feel so much discomfort, like just, because it's so cringy. It's so cringy.

Do you ever watch things that are so cringy that, like, it makes you kind of sick to your stomach? That's a good example of it. My son will literally walk out of the room when, as, as. Something like that happens on a TV show or a movie that we're watching, because he can't stand the cringe. Yeah, it's so cring. So here what he was telling was that Jack Welch story. And him and this other guy disagreed and the other guy was trying to knife him in the office politics. And Jack Welch calls him into his office and he wins the argument.

But Jack Welsh has this advice for him afterwards saying, hey, there'll always be difficult people. And then people start laughing, right? But he's going to finish his story. And the story doesn't end well, right? And he says like, now the trick is to not let those people who are looking to pick a fight find you. Oops. That's exactly what's happening right now. He went to go give this speech, giving people an opportunity to find him and make him the face of the strike, right?

But Zaslov is a good face for that. And the reason is he's the one leading the cost cutting. in the industry. Now they're all doing it, they all agree, but he is a spectacular example of it. As he's putting away a quarter of a billion dollars over the last couple of years, he is chopping away at cost, employees, et cetera, discovery, Warner Brothers. Now if you're wondering why, to answer the question Anna brought up earlier, it doesn't have to do with their core business. Their core business is actually very profitable. So why are they chopping all these people? because Zazlov made the decision to take on tremendous debt to get this merger done.

And since they're saddled with all that debt, the stock market is forcing them and they're happily doing it, cutting costs so they can say it's okay, it's okay, we'll make even more profit so we can pay back the debt. But it's a short-term strategy because like Elon Musk is seeing with Twitter, there's only so much you can chop at your employees before you can. get strikes before you get people tuning out, before you get to a point where you've done long-term damage to your brand and to your business. But hey, he's got to make those quarterly earnings every quarter. And that's what his bonus is based on. So he's looking for a big fat bonus this year too after those cuts. And if it destroys Warner Brothers' discovery in the

long run, who cares? He won't be there for it. I think that's a good place to end it. I feel even more sick now. But yeah, it's a great point. I mean, and it really does pour cold water on the myth that as long as you do everything right, as long as you work hard and you're earning the company you're working for a lot of money, you're going to be safe, your job's going to be safe. But in this case, because of the merger, it didn't matter. No, I know for a fact, people within the company in portions of the company that are very,

very profitable, that are getting cut anyway because they got to pay down the debt. And that's just the stone cold factor finance. So the original sin was taking on that debt to do the merger in the first place. But that's a sin for the shareholders, that's a problem for the company. But it's not a problem for the executives because the bigger their revenue is, the bigger their stock prices and the more they get paid. So they have an incentive to build these giant untenable companies and do tremendous damage to them in the short term while they reap the profits, the executives do.

And then if the company runs into problems later, like, by the way, almost all the retail stores you know, Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, this happened to all of them. They suck all the money out and they go, oh, I guess the company's failing now, and they kill it. All right. When we come back from the break, E. Jean Carroll is coming for Trump again. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.