The Young Turks - Pudding Fingers

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

Episode summary: Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas didn’t disclose the deal. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims intel leaker was arrested because he’s "white, male, Christian." Republican uses "great replacement" theory to justify abortion ban. Donald Trump ad slams "pudding fingers" Ron DeSantis for supporting social security cuts. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), John Iadarola (@johniadarola) & Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) 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! Oh, shit you're on. Oh, shit you're on. Drop it. Power Power Power Panel, Jay Hugar, John Idle, a host of damage report.

Jordan Yule, host of many things, including GameBusters on Twitch.tvs slash TYT, also very un-American, but that's a different thing, okay? So having nothing to be. but fun here, guys. All right, look, we got a ton of show ahead for you guys. The Republicans are, you're going to be shocked to find out on the warpath. Of course, right? So we'll get onto their attacks on race, on gender, on trans issues, you name it, they got it. And we're counter attacking today. But I also want to tell you guys that there is a new ad that Donald Trump drop right on top of Ron DeSantis' head and fingers. And it is cray cray and it's kind of awesome.

So that's also in the show. Yeah. So all that to look forward to John. Yes. We're going to do sort of like the dinner of our news. That'll be the dessert and we'll eat it with our hands. Anyway, let's turn now to the biggest news when it comes to the Supreme Court. Well, you know, there's a little bit of competition.

it covered all. If you found out that a conservative, like right wing mega donor had written a check for $1,000 to a Supreme Court justice, just given him $1,000, you'd probably be worried that that might represent a bribe. What if you found out he'd handed over $133,000? Well, we've got something kind of like that on our hands with conservative billionaire donor Harlan Crow, who it was just revealed by follow-up research by Republicans to their amazing revelation of this longstanding relationship between Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow, where he had been taking him around the world on these amazing vacations. Turns out now that back in 2014, Harlan Crow bought three properties belonging to Clarence Thomas at his family that Thomas

just forgot to ever mention in the federal disclosure forms that one might have expected, certainly the law expected. So this marks the first known instance of money directly flowing from the donor to Clarence Thomas. I mean, you've had something like that in the past, not just with the trips, but with the incredibly lavish gifts, but for some reason, this is worse. Crow apparently bought three properties. Together they cost $133,363 from their three co-owners,

which include Clarence Thomas, his mother, and the family of Thomas's late brother. This is according to a state tax document and a deed dated October 15th, 2014. Crow now owned the house where the justice's elderly mother was living. And what's interesting is that Thomas did not disclose the sale, which is apparently unlawful. But in response to this, he also doesn't have anything to say. Just a man of few words when it comes to responding to this sort of journalism, as well as complying with his legal requirements.

But while he didn't have much to say, Harlan Crow actually did, he said, my intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas House. Dedicated to telling the story of our nation's second black Supreme Court justice. I approach the Thomas family about my desire to maintain this historic site. So future generations could learn about the inspiring life of one of our greatest Americans. Now, Crow's statement did not address why he also bought two vacant lots from Thomas down the street that did not represent a historic place that he grew up as a young tyke. It was just property that you could buy and thus give a bunch of money to the other guy.

He didn't talk about that. He did write that the other lots were later sold to a vetted builder who was committed to improving the quality of the neighborhood and preserving its historical integrity. Of course, he built different buildings on it. So it's not preserving history. It's new development, but, you know, come up with whatever facade you're going to. Now, I also want you to bear in mind that $133,000, while it might not seem like a lot of money in some real estate. markets right now, it does potentially represent a massive overpayment for that particular property. Crow bought several other properties on that same street, paid significantly less

than the one with his deal with the Thomas's. In 2013, just the prior year, he bought a pair of properties on the same block, a vacant lot, and a small house for a total of $40,000. So again, look, houses can vary, but two properties, including a house, $40,000, Clarence Thomas's house, $133,000, seems pretty suspicious. And it actually gets even more suspicious, but I want to give both you a chance to weigh in. Yeah. So, John, that's your right to begin the story with, did they pay more than market price? And it appears that they did.

Okay, so that's already a giant problem. But there are many others. So number one, this funnels money directly into Clarence Thomas' pocket. This is not, hey, I have a rich friend. We went on a vacation together. He paid for it. Okay, that's already a problem because you didn't disclose it. And this wasn't a little vacation.

These are vacations that are worth a half a million dollars. There were incredible vacations. But at least that didn't go directly into your pocket. This did, okay? Third problem. Apparently, as far as we can tell, Clarence Thomas's mother didn't pay any rent. Wait a minute, she doesn't own the house. Harlan Crow owes the house.

Why is she not paying any rent? That's just the favor to Clarence Thomas. Again, more money in the Thomas family pocket. Now directly being given by this person who has a vested interest in Supreme Court decisions. as a person who's involved in corporations and businesses, et cetera, that is going to affect, you know, Supreme Court decisions could affect billions of dollars of forms. So for him to spend 133,000, 40,000, et cetera, these are small bribes to pay, okay? But we're not done, there's still more.

There's a, they did over $30,000 in renovations to her house. She didn't pay for any of it. There were houses next to hers that were creating issues for her. They're making too much noise and decrepit situation, too much parties. Harlan Crow happens to buy those houses and then he clears them out and he happens to sell a new house there to a police officer who's going to keep this place safe. Man, this is a giant number of favors, financial favors to a Supreme Court justice. Clarice Thomas knows it's wrong, never reports any of it. So now if we don't do something about this, whether it's Chief Justice Roberts,

the ultimate authority is with Congress, et cetera, well, we're just going to say now bribery of the Supreme Court is legal and that is a deeply troubling precedent. Yeah, that's that's my takeaway as well, Jank. It's what comes of this? This is a brazenly corrupt act and pattern of behavior for 20 years. And think about that time frame too. They became friends. He like Clarence Thomas tried to couch this and oh, this is a close personal friendship. And he reiterated that point multiple times in his statement. Well, that friendship began after he became a Supreme Court justice. So Harlan Crow wasn't there from the beginning. It's not like they were childhood friends. He wanted to be his friend because he's a Supreme Court

justice. I don't know if Thomas is just going to ignore that point or acknowledges it, but that's why he wants to be his friend. It's not because of his personality, because by all accounts, Clarence Thomas doesn't have much of a personality. But if he can do this without any repercussions, without any oversight from Congress, without any punishment whatsoever, what's the point? What is the point of our legal system, of the Supreme Court, of any attempts at implementing ethical guidelines, or boundaries for public figures in their behavior. What's the point? What are we doing? Because he's not the only person who have behaved, who has behaved in a corrupt manner in the past several years, the past few decades.

And time and time again, we see the more powerful and wealthy and connected elite get away with this kind of stuff. But average working people are locked up for years, especially if they're black, for petty crimes. It's a two-tier justice system. And unfortunately, one of the people who are in a position for the rest of their life to oversee that justice system and that legal system isn't held to the same standard. Yeah, you know, like we've obviously, you know, here at TYT, we've been talking about political corruption for a long time, you know, Wolfpack and all that. We already thought that we had enough issues, not just with, you know, campaign donations

to elected officials at a variety of levels, but we were already worried about all of the different pressures that influence the Supreme Court justice due to the way that the nominating process is run combined with the fact that they have lifetime appointments. They're inclined to take certain sorts of positions so that they can get that job. They can get any of these jobs at different levels of the federal judiciary. But I guess I was still kind of naive because I imagined that for the most part, then that's it, which is why sometimes you get justices that end up issuing rulings that are different than you might predict. There have been some, including Roberts in some cases, who didn't necessarily end up being the justice you thought

that they would be. But no, now it's just, I guess it's open season. I guess if Roberts doesn't do anything, if Congress doesn't do anything, then I don't know, why doesn't George Soros just cut a check to Sotomayor for a quarter million dollars? I mean, that's fine. He's just trying to preserve the legacy of blah, blah, blah. We can come up with some sort of stupid cover story and what's the difference? It's not against the law. There's apparently no laws. You can shower them with expensive gifts and expensive trips and you can, you know, buy their used clothes for a thousand times market value. You can just transfer money to them. And then they can rule in your favor. And we've just, I guess we as regular people have no recourse. I mean, this one is at least

from what we can tell, definitely against the law. All of his other stuff seems wildly unethical. I think a regular person would believe that they're getting away with murder. But the system has been set up to advantage people like this so that they can't easily be caught. In this case, there is a federal disclosure law that was passed after Watergate that requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. This was way over that. He didn't do that. He didn't report that he had deals with Harlan Crow. He obviously was avoiding reporting it because it looks so terrible. And four ethics law experts told ProPublica that he needed to report this, given the role that Crowe is

played in subsidizing the lifestyle Thomas's wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets. I don't have to wonder about that. I already know that. I mean, look, he handed over $500,000 to Ginny Thomas's pack. It is ridiculous what they can get away with. So the question now is, what can be done? Who has any chance of actually trying to do something? AOC had been talking about trying to impeach Clarence Thomas after the original reporting. So what if anything happens now? Yeah, so, I want to address two things you said, John. First, about the George Soros comment. One of our members said something very similar right before you said, is Sina Hoga Boom wrote in,

if George Soros bought AOC a piece of key lime pie, these cucks would lose their minds. That is about right. I love our members, t.yt.com slash join to become a member or hit the join button below the video on YouTube. All right, anyway, on to the most, serious point, which is what do we do about it? Well, you know they're not going to impeach Clarence Thomas. The Democrats don't have the stones for it. The Republicans would lose their minds. They'd say defund the FBI, the Congress, wait, no, we're in Congress. Don't defund that, but defund something, right? They would just absolutely lose it. There's no way it's going to happen. So get a load of this, well, I don't know if it's an irony or just like a vicious cycle of corruption.

that has happened. So in my book, I explain how corruption started with the Supreme Court. We never voted on it. Never once did the American people in any way, shape, or form say that private money should be able to go to politicians. That is, that was an anathema to the founding fathers. It's a ridiculous idea. The Supreme Court, by the way, with literally crooked justices, decided, yeah, we're going to allow corruption. We're going to allow open and brazen and bribery of politicians that go to Congress and the presidency, right? Now by letting Clarence Thomas get away with this, which is almost certainly what's going to happen, the Congress will return the favor to the Supreme Court and say, oh, you can take bribes too.

So now they're all going to take bribes. And this is just a free for all. We don't have a democracy anymore. It's an auction, a total open auction where they buy, every part of our government freely and rub it in our face. And so look, I mentioned my book there here. Oh, I got a fake version of the book right here. So this is what it's going to look like when it comes out. Anyway, the inside is not the real book. We just finished it today, literally, literally, literally, literally today. Anyway, you can preorder a t.wit.com slash justice. But the essence of the book, the very core of a chapter four is exactly how the Supreme Court stole our democracy. Now Congress is going to going to finish the job by letting the Supreme Court take endless bribes if they like Clarence Thomas

get away with this. Yeah, I go back to my point earlier. I'm kind of cynical on any potential outcomes, even though this seems so clear cut. Notice John laid out, we have a very clear transfer of money from one guy to a justice through this real estate sale. That it just seems so blatant And so easy, this is a slam done case, but because of partisan gridlock in DC, nothing's probably going to happen. But the political will is there, right? Over 1.2 million people have signed their name at moveon.org slash Thomas to call on Congress to impeach Clarence Thomas. And, you know, acknowledge that's great. We see this groundswell support. People want that. It's the right thing to do. But when you have a Congress who's just filled with an obstructionist Republicans, what's going to happen?

I try to rein in my cynicism on this, but it's only going to get worse. If this is okay, then something slightly more egregious is going to be okay. And we just keep going, keep going, keep going until they're just all bought and sold. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, well, I'll end the story on a fun note here, going back to our members, who I love. I think they're so smart and funny. Dragging from the boogie down, writes in to Jordan's earlier point about Clarence Thomas's personality. Clarence Thomas has the personality of a Walmart parking lot.

And that dynamic character is going to destroy our Congress and our Supreme Court at the same time. And probably everyone in Washington is going to let him get away with it. Okay, I think we should probably take our first break. our first break, we come back, we actually have some other breaking news and it does involve the Supreme Court, so don't go anywhere. A young tourist membership as is his want. Wiki Gray gifted five young turts memberships. Lauren McCraig gifted 20 young turks memberships.

These are all on YouTube. Guys are amazing. Thank you for helping out the community. Thank you for helping someone you don't know. That's how progressivism works. And Coyote Boy also became a member. You guys are all wonderful. Thank you.

We appreciate it. John's got mortals. Okay, let's turn now to the news. Breaking news, the Supreme Court has at least for now restored to one of the most commonly used pills used in medication abortion, although things could change very soon. Here are the details, as we understand them right now. Justice Samuel Alito stepped in to temporarily block lower court's decisions to impose restrictions on Muffa Pristone, a pill used for medication abortion. The measure is essentially a pause on a Texas judge's

ruling last week to void the drug's approval by the Food and Drug Administration. It also overrides the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals attempt late Wednesday to curb access to the drug, which means that at least for now, assuming you're in a state that is, you know, with us in the modern era, then this drug is available to use. It can continue to be distributed by mail and taken up to the 10th week of pregnancy, at least until midnight on Wednesday, April 19th, when the temporary hold that Alito put in will expire. The Department of Justice is currently appealing the Fifth Circuit decision, and the Supreme

Court has given all parties until noon on Tuesday, April 18th, to submit. their responses to the prior ruling. In case you are not aware of how we got to this point, this began on April 7th when Judge Matthew Caxmeric of the Northern District of Texas ruled to revoke the drug's FDA approval, overriding decades of scientific consensus on the drug safety. His ruling claimed that the pill was unsafe and that the FDA didn't do its due diligence when approving it in 2000. What you might not know about him is that in addition to being a judge, He's also a lifelong chemist, and that is why he feels confident in overruling the scientific consensus of not only the FDA, America-based scientists, but scientists working in many

other countries where the drug has been available for many years. I'm joking, he doesn't have any training like that. He's an ideologue, he's a radical, he's using his position to try to stop access to abortion in states where Republicans do not control the state legislatures and can't overrule the will of the people directly. That's my interpretation, my speculation, but that's where we're at. What do you guys think? Jake, I believe you're muted. You J-R'd yourself. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Sorry, guys. Okay, so this is really good news. As predicted by, I don't know, me.

So let's show you a video from earlier in the weekend. Then I'm going to tell you why I'm brag. Whenever you have conflicting courts from different circuits, it goes up to the Supreme Court, especially on important issues like this. And so which way are they going to go? It's 63 conservatives filled with religious zealots. So you might think that they might join the religious zealid judge in Texas and go, I don't give a damn about the science. I don't care that it's safer than Tylenol. We're going to ban it, right? But I don't think so. As we've been saying all throughout, I think that those judges are more pro-corporate than they are. even more so than they are religious elements.

And I think that the Supreme Court eventually will do as their bosses tell them. Their bosses are corporate America. I mean, I'm not saying hashtag Jenk was right, but there it is. Okay, now guys, the important part here is not me being right. That's the secondary benefit of this story. Tertiary. No, seriously. Look, you can tell how every story in DC's,

going to end. That's why we do, I do those predictions. That's why they're almost always right. The only person that might be more right is Anna. That's because we understand something really, really, really simple that apparently no other person in media understands. It's always the money, okay? So if Casmeric's decision stood, then any drug could be pulled by any judge in America, left wing or right wing. There's no way the drug companies are going to allow that. And the drug companies own all of Washington, including the Supreme Court. So in this case, the Supreme Court could have waited a lot longer to intervene in this case.

They had a lot of different options and they could have just let it run for a long time. They could have not even taking the case, although that would have been more surprising. But they jump in right away to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this drug is totally available. I mean, I mean, oh, we're so pro lives. Oh, yeah, get rid of God damn Roe v. But allow the abortion drug, it's a drug. You're making money, right? You're making a lot of money for me. Allow it. You got to allow it. Told you. It's it, I'm curious to see how the full court responds. I mean, it's, they're eventually going to hear this case. Because of this forum shopping approach that conservatives have loved to take, it has really showed. what a loon kasmarsik is and why they keep going to him. If you look at his opinion, I did an interview with Chris Geidner, who's been a legal reporter for decades now. The other day, he pointed out how in his decision,

one of his justifications for trying to restrict access to this drug nationwide, despite it being incredibly safe at having FDA approval now for 20-some years, he cited abortion, and a website called abortion changes, And this one quote, he pulled this one quote out of context and immediately following it, it acknowledged that, sure, people who write on this site are going to have different opinions than the vast majority of people who take abortion drugs, which is the majority of people now who have abortions, and shows like he's willing to do anything. It's not rooted in any law, it's not rooted in any jurisprudence.

It's just pure ideologue BS and that's who they're going to for this decision because they want to create a deeper wedge on this issue despite many, many powerful Republicans behind closed doors actually being pro choice because the people they're sleeping around with, the people they're cheating on their spouses with. If something happens, they do want access. They just don't they don't want you to realize that. They want to keep that a wedge issue to drive people to the polls. But ultimately, They really do want some option for themselves. Yeah, and also, and I think we should close with this because we actually have another abortion related story to get to. I kind of, I agree with Jenk. I think that setting up a precedent where literally any judge could be like, no, you can't use this drug anymore. Seems like utter chaos.

That's obviously not how the system is supposed to work. From the point of view of like state level Republicans, if this had worked, this is almost perfect for them for two reasons. One, despite the fact that the Dobbs decision, they said their cover story was, the justices shouldn't have decided for everyone. Instead, let's let's let each state decide. Well, obviously, many of these right-wing states are trying to outlaw abortion in other states. They want to make the abortion illegal nationally. They want to make it so that you can't go to a different state from a red state and get an abortion.

So they're not interested in just stopping what happens at their own borders, but also a lot of them are getting increasingly scared of actually proposing and passing these radical measures because they know how out of touch it is with the mainstream. So wouldn't it be convenient to have one judge? make it effectively illegal across the entire country, rather than having these red state legislatures have to do it themselves, put it on their record, and then potentially lose their reelection bids. That would have been convenient. Hopefully that's not the way that it works out.

Okay, why don't we move on to our D block? We actually have something related. We were talking about extreme rhetoric. I think we have a good example of that with this. We have killed 2,000 babies since abortion became legal. Those are 2,000 people in the state of Nebraska that could be working and filling some of those positions and we have vacancies. We're not here. Our state population has not grown except by those foreigners who've moved here or refugees

who have been placed here. Why is that? It's because we've killed 200,000 people. These are people we've killed. Good Lord, that is Nebraska State Senator Steve Erdman. You're gonna be shocked to find out, Republican, talking about how they need to outlaw abortion so that the state population can grow. That's his argument.

And of course, many people listen to what he just said, and they hear shades of the great replacement theory that's become so common on the right wing. It used to just be in sort of like fringe right wing forums and things like that. No, now it's just everywhere. So we're gonna get to that. But understand that those comments came during debate

over a bill that would ban abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy, including exemptions for rape incest and life-saving procedures. Six weeks of pregnancies, as we've pointed out many times, for many people means it's just outlawed. It is criminalized, good luck, maybe you're lucky, and you figure it out super on the spot, and you're able to get an appointment and everything works perfectly, and there's no extra roadblocks to slow things down and put you past the six week point. But for the vast majority of people, it will be illegal. That is what he is pushing for with his insane rhetoric. What do you

both think. Yeah, so before I even get into the great replacement theory, I want you guys to notice a couple of things he said in there that I found really interesting. So first of all, he's saying 2000, he meant 200,000, he corrected himself later, right? But the interesting part is he said, now that's 2,000 people that could have been working and fill in these positions. In other words, he's saying, our beloved corporations need more cheap labor. And we couldn't give them that cheap labor with good white folks. How that they're getting it from people that don't look like us. What are these, and some of them can't even fill the positions.

What are our beloved corporations going to do? That's why we can't have abortion. Man, that is fascinating. Like that you're so corrupt, you're willing to bring abortion in here to say that no, no, no, we got to look out for for big business poor big business and then secondly his rant against immigrants now is kind of curious because look at how again they the right we always does slight a hand it's always some sort of illusion right remember they were against immigrants not because they're latina not because they look different than us but because they're taking

our jobs god damn but they're taking our jobs well we have now we have near full employment we've never had unemployment as low as we have it today in America, in American history. So now they're not taking our jobs. So he's saying, well, they're taking the jobs we don't want. And we can't even fill all the jobs we have. But we still hate the immigrants. What happened? I thought you didn't hate them. You just were worried about the economic situation. Now you don't have that excuse anymore and you still hate the immigrants and you're saying give me more white babies to replace them thank you for admitting your obvious racism all of these years you know every every person's reason and justification for terminating a pregnancy is different but there are people who sometimes

terminate a pregnancy it was unwanted but also because they can't afford to provide for a kid And when you have a state like that where people like him are elected and dictate state laws and strip those areas for parts, as we've seen throughout the Midwest, radical conservatives have just, again, stripped these states for parts to benefit their corporate donors and their corporate overlords. That has become increasingly difficult, an increasingly difficult place for people to make ends meet. And you could just draw a through on. Like, Jank, you're pointing out, He's explicitly saying these are people who could fill these jobs to benefit these corporations. You could draw a through line straight through that rhetoric and how they see people as just cogs in this big corporate machine.

And that's really what they're getting at. And whether they want to use an abortion as a wedge issue for this or as justification to keep pushing these people into these low wage jobs. Ultimately, it's to keep people reliant on the, again, these low paying jobs from these corporations. it keeps them in positions where it's more and more difficult to make ends meet. And I don't blame anyone for wanting to terminate a pregnancy if they can't afford it. This is the system Republicans have created, and it's only going to get worse when they continue pushing these radical anti-choice bills. Yeah, you're totally right that for a lot of people, they can't afford it.

But also, if like, if your big fear is abortion and how many people can participate in the workforce, having a kid in some cases makes it very difficult to continue to work. for some time. It's just weird that he discounts that. I assume a little bit of misogyny might be at play there that he doesn't think that their contributions or would be valued anyway. But also, like the argument that he's making right there is that this is about, you know, making sure that people are working or whatever. I don't believe that that's actually why he is working to criminalize abortion. But that's what he would have us believe. If that is actually your rationale, that you believe that rights people have had for their entire

lives should be stripped away and they should be forced to bear and raise a child just so that we make sure that we have people who can work. Why is it that they won't do other things to make sure that people don't prematurely die that would take them out of the workforce? Like, is he going to ban assault rifles so that, you know, all of these kids who theoretically, when they're gun down in their schools, could someday go on to become plumbers and orthodontists and things like that? Is he going to do that? Just had a curiosity, since he's implying it, life is so important to him, I just out of curious, I looked up, did he have much to say during the pandemic when, by the way, one in 382 people in Nebraska died from COVID, better than

some states, worse than others. He called for herd immunity. It's the only way. And he stressed, by the way, that businesses needed to reopen. That was his argument for just let it run amok. Sure, it'll kill a bunch of people, and I guess presumably they won't be able to work later on, but whatever, we got to get the doors open. So just let people get sick, let people die. He has a very tenuous attachment to this idea that life is important. Yeah. So, John, I don't know if you're reading the members' minds or the members are reading your minds, but a YouTube member, the Freedom House 1984, wrote in before you said it, guns are the number one killer of children. What does he have to say about that?

And so if you're worried about white kids getting replaced, well, a lot of white kids are dying in their classrooms, getting shot up by AR-15s. So why don't you, and they're already exist. They're not zygotes. They're human beings, fully grown human beings. There are kids, white or otherwise. But you have seemingly no concern about that. None. You're not pro-life. None of these guys are pro-life. I mean, look at him. As John pointed out, and every issue, what does he bring it back to? How is it affecting corporations? Am I still going to get donors? Am I going to get the checks? How is it affecting big business? I love big business. Okay? Come on. Get out of here. But guys, the last thing is. So right wing says, oh, left wing uses racism too much, etc. But think about it. He's worried that they're going to get replaced. Replace us, but what do you mean replace us? Remember that in Charlottesville, they chanted, you will not replace. replace us, the Jews will not replace us, etc. Right. When you say that immigrants are replacing us, you're basically saying you're not part of us. So when you're a Latino or Muslim immigrant or an African immigrant or anything like that, by the way, when there was mainly European immigrants coming in, there was no talk of a replacement theory. There was no talk of replacing us. There was

none of this, okay? So there was originally when this country was largely run by Protestants and Catholic immigrants were coming in, Irish, Italian, et cetera. Then all of a sudden, it's the others, it's the others, it's not us. And they were very much against Irish and Italians. Then they accepted the Irish and Italians, and it became us as white, and we don't want anyone who isn't us. When you're talking about replacing us, you are by definition in these contexts being racist because you were saying, I don't think those Latinos are us. I don't think those people coming into the country that are brown, black, and Asian are us. And for progressives, we don't make that distinction. We actually believe in equality and justice for all. So I don't see those

immigrants as them. I see them as us. And that's the difference between treating people based on race versus being open and inclusive to everyone. Yeah. Okay, we've got to take a break, right? So let's take a quick break here. We got more devastating stories for you guys when we come back. All right, back on the Young Turks. Jane Hugar, John Adlerola, Jordan Yule with you guys.

Everybody check out damage report every single day. 10 a.m. Pacific 1 o'clock Eastern t.t.com slash live to watch it. Michelle Chase just became a member. So did L.S. and then L.S. turned around and gifted five young tourist memberships. So instantly helping others in the community. We love you guys for it. John, what's next? The news is, let's turn to that. Yesterday, a 21-year-old national guardsman, Jake Texeria, was arrested for allegedly leaking confidential Pentagon documents to a private discord group.

Now, immediately after that, some Democrats were labeling him a traitor, saying that this is obviously incredibly serious. There were others, though, that leaped to his defense, including Representative Marjorie Green, who tweeted that Jake is white, male, Christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself, who is the real enemy? A young low-level national guardsman or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine,

a non-NATO nation against nuclear Russia without war powers. It wasn't just her, though. Tucker Carlson also leaped to his defense take a lot. The news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what's actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden, Maybe a little worse, actually, because unlike al-Qaeda, apparently this kid is a racist. If the media is celebrating him, I don't feel like I am. But he has a good point about the Biden thing there.

Jake Texeria was hauled in, whereas with Obama, it was catch and release, I guess. He's off living on a farm upstate, I think, right, Tucker? But anyway, what do you guys think about this? The move to basically say that because he released these documents that, they believe reflect poorly on the war effort or something like that, that that makes him a hero and that Biden obviously despises him or something. I don't I feel like they're feeling a lot of blanks there, but what do you think? Yeah, so that let me fill on a couple more blanks. So some of the stuff that he released certainly helps the Russians have a lot better intelligence on the

Ukrainians and us. So I don't know if that's part of the reason why Tucker Carlson's of the world are celebrating. Now, secondly, this is the same Fox News that told us, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, et cetera, were the worst traders in the world. And now all of a sudden they're celebrating a guy who leaked documents, who, by the way, is not even a whistleblower. He didn't leak it to the press. He didn't say this is a national security issue. And he didn't say that, hey, the American people need to know this because it's their government doing something wrong behind their back. No, he just leaked it through his buddies to impress them and really sensitive information that can get people killed. Now, wait a minute, actually thinking about Edward Stodon,

wasn't Edward Staten also a Christian white male and anti-war? But yet Donald Trump wanted to imprison him for life. Is Donald Trump against Christian white males? I'm just using Marjorie Taylor Green's logic here. So they're hilarious, they're a joke. And guys, Yesterday on the show and the first day that it broke, I said, you got to evaluate the evidence based on what he leaked. Was it a whistleblower or was it gratuitous and endangered our secrets and our sources, right? And I said, I don't care that he's racist and anti-Semitic. That's his personal issue. As far as the law is concerned, I care about what he leaked, right?

But apparently the Tucker Carlson's in the Marjorie Taylor world do care that he's racist and anti-Semitic. They have found that as a reason to defend him. That's amazing. So I think we need to be cautious with how we react to what was actually leaked, right? They use the same line of attack against Chelsea Manning, against Snowden. People conflated the two because they were so confused because a lot of this, stuff is obfuscated. The line of attack against Manning especially was she's going to get people killed with these leaks. Is that proven? It was really wasn't clear. But they're doing that

to scare people into just accepting and adopting the national security line. And I'm also curious why there was this rush from Bellingcat, which is very suspicious with a lot of red flags around them and also New York Times reporters rushing to docks this person. Why? How is that in the national interest? Shouldn't the federal government be doing that? It's just very odd for, you know, big institutions and legacy media outlets to be rushing to dock somebody who by all accounts didn't even intentionally try to leak these things like you're pointing out, Jank, wasn't a whistleblower, wasn't doing it out of, you know, concern over what the U.S. is doing. It's just trying to brag to his friends in a private Discord server.

And on that front, I think it poses a bunch of new challenges for the military and for the national security state going forward because this is a really new sort of issue, new sort of security issue. Traditionally, these types of leaks have either been handed over to a reporter in secret or uploaded to different reporters or whistleblowers or places like WikiLeaks. Now it's this guy thought he was private and it really makes you think about what actually is private in our digital lives. But the one thing we really need to pump the brakes on is what came out today, which is that the federal government is now going to consider and evaluate options on how they can monitor and surveil private chats like

Discord. So they're using this again as an opportunity to further encroach on what should be, your digital privacy. They've already infiltrated every other aspect of our lives through things like the Patriot Act. Now they're using this to justify more surveillance. So we really need to slow down and not unilaterally accept this national security line that this is going to put anybody in danger. Yeah, I don't. I'll say this though. Sorry, John. Look, I like we've now said a couple of times. I don't think this guy's a whistleblower. And I think we can't have every bozo who works with national security secrets, just bring him the Mar-a-Lago and give him out the guess. So, but seriously, like, whether it's Trump or this guy, we can't just let them break the law

nonstop. I'm not saying rush to judgment. Definitely you're right that let's be considerate. Let's make sure that, you know, was it really breaking the law? Did it really endanger people? But if it did, then I think you should, you know, face the consequences for sure. Now, having said that, the thing I agree with you 200% on is because he just randomly put it on some sort of Discord server doesn't mean that the digital privacy of all Americans should be violated. That's a hell note to that extension. No way. And then no one on the right wants that. No one on the left wants that.

Only like establishment goons in Washington wanted. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. that you would use this one incident as like the rationale for oh, I guess those aren't private anymore, I guess, and other similar services. Discord obviously is one of many similar sorts of services. Seems crazy. When it comes to the content of the secrets, I honestly, I don't even particularly care. I don't even know at this point what a whistleblower is, what makes you one, what makes you not. We will see as stuff comes out. For me, it's just the obvious hypocrisy

that look, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Green want the U.S. to pull out of Ukraine to not support anymore. That's it. And so thus they filter everything that happened here through that lens. And they're not even satisfied with what was actually revealed. Tucker Carlson was saying on his show that it revealed that U.S. soldiers were in a shooting war with Russia. Didn't show that. Fox News had already confirmed that it didn't show that earlier in the day. He's not interested in what's really going on. And one would think that if reality, that which of whistleblower can reveal to us is what's most important, then you wouldn't feel the need to lie about what had just been revealed. And then also, Marjorie Green, her involvement here.

She's using this as in the same way that Tucker Carlson will every once in a while use the term elite to pretend that he's a populist. She's using this to pretend that she's anti-war. She's going to go right back to advocating for an invasion of northern Mexico next week. So it's just BS, the idea that she thinks that we need to have like more, more sympathy for people who leak stuff. Literally last week she was calling for Alvin Bragg to be locked up because they thought that the exact count of indictments had been leaked maybe 60 minutes before Trump was arraigned. She said that's illegal he should be locked up. So the idea they they love leaks all of a sudden is ridiculous too. I think that everyone should try to maintain a standard and apply it across these.

That is not what has happened. As you guys have pointed out, Tucker Carlson was attacking Edward Snowden back in the day. Donald Trump, when he left office, he gave pardons or reduced sentences to 143 people from Steve Bannon to little Wayne. Snowden wasn't one of those. Julian Assange wasn't one of those. If there was any behind the scenes advocacy on the part of Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Green for those pardons, I haven't heard anything about it. And so for me, it's just the massive hypocrisy. Everything is 100% contingent on what these people want politically out of each individual circumstance, principles be damned.

Yeah, super quick, I just want to follow up on that. I was going to say the same thing about Bannon. He's an absolute criminal and pardoned by Donald Trump, but he couldn't find his way to pardoning Assangeur Snowden. So they don't care about whistleblowers at all. All they want to do is protect criminals. And then on war, oh, we're so anti-war. my God, we liked us to share a kid, not because he said the goddamn Drews, but because he said, oh, we shouldn't go to war. First of all, you don't even know his war positions. And you don't

know if the things that he leaked will lead to less war or more war. But besides that, Mark Levine and Steve Bannon, just earlier this week, we're talking about, well, you got to get ready for war with China. We might have to go to World War III. Anti-war my ass. And right-wingers, for God's sake, you care at all that your politicians and leaders are total hypocrites and have no principles at all. And like, what's your position? Are you anti-war or are you pro-war? So when you hear a right-wing pundit or a right-wing congressperson tell you that all of a sudden war is awesome with China and then but turn around and say, oh, well, I don't like war when it comes to Ukraine, don't you go, hey, isn't that kind of weird? What's your actual position? Can you think for yourself?

Is that possible? Just put a couple of thoughts behind it. Answer those questions for yourself because the rest of us are scratching our heads going, I don't even know what the right wing thinks. I have no idea what your positions are. Any foul thought, Jordan? No, they're not really consistent on that. But there are moments where they do break through into an anti-war conversation that we do need to be worried about.

The left shouldn't seed ground to the right on anti-war rhetoric, you know, genuine or not. I think most of it is disingenuous, but they are making inroads in that space where people, you know, these aren't conversations we would have about the rights anti-war positions five, 10 years ago. So we do need to be worried about how this keeps popping up and how it can deceive people, but ultimately I think they're disingenuous, but we really shouldn't seat ground on things. And that's why to go back to Ukraine, we shouldn't have had the response from Democrats when progressives said, hey, let's consider diplomacy and the role in this conflict right now. Maybe there should be an increased focus on diplomacy. When you have establishment

Democrats beating them back for even suggesting that's a really tame suggestion, that gives a window that the right wing can exploit. Again, I think they're disingenuous on this, but they know how to weaponize that rhetoric to make Democrats look like warhawks. So we shouldn't give them that opportunity. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, and we need to make sure that we point out the inconsistency on particular politicians. I mean, the idea that every one of them is salivating for the conquering of Ukraine seems inconsistent with being just all for peace. When it comes to Donald Trump, I mean, the fact that we've pointed out many times, he massively increased the amount of air strikes that were going on in Syria, deployed the Moab

in Afghanistan, sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, supported the war effort on Yemen, sent special forces into a number of other states. The idea that these people are anti-war should be on its face, ridiculous. For some reason on the internet, it's not. So it's up to us, us in front of the camera and all of you watching and make sure that people understand what a farce that is. end a Friday show on something so serious and dreary as war. Let's have a little bit of fun with this. Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong. And we're not just talking about putting.

DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements. Like cutting Medicare, slashing social security, even raising our retirement age. Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money. Oh, and get this man a spoon. Make America Great Again, Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising. You can't unsee that. So if you're not familiar with what that's referencing, it was a month ago that news broke the DeSantis, according to two sources had once eaten chocolate pudding with three of his fingers. He was asked about it and he issued a quasi

denial telling Pierce Morgan that he didn't recall ever doing. so. And if you're new to American politics, if they use the word recall, they're lying to you. He definitely did it. If you had done that or not, you'd know. If someone asked me, have you ever eaten more than two boxes of Pop-Tarts in a single sitting? I wouldn't have to say that I don't recall for sure. You know, you know. What do you guys think about this? I think that ad is devastating. So there's two reasons why it's devastating. He's going after DeSantis's position on Social Security and Medicare. And those positions are deeply, deeply, deeply unpopular. By the way, especially in Florida with a heavy senior citizen population, right? And so that is

savvy of Trump's team to go populist and progressive against DeSantis. Okay. So Trump is pretending to have the progressive position there. He doesn't actually have it, but it's good politics. Now, secondarily, there's two things that trigger the conservative mind the most. This is borne out by studies, and we've covered it on the show before. Number two is fear. You would think that number one would be fear. No, number two is. Number one is disgust. If you trigger disgust for them, that's why Tucker Carlson and Trump are always talking about immigrants are dirty. It's disgusting. disgusting, they always say, right? So here, this ad, they make DeSantis look disgusting. They know that that triggers the right wing mind and goes, whoa, I don't want DeSantis.

So while DeSantis is sitting on his ass, seemingly in retirement in South Beach or something, Trump is bludgeoning him. Now, it's totally working. We've covered the polls for you guys. DeSantis was catching out before Trump started to kick his ass. And now DeSantis is getting crushed, losing by 20, 30, 40 points in polls, okay? But the second part is also really important, and you probably won't hear on any other show. Where the hell are the Democrats? Why don't they do ads like this? See, it's not that hard. It's not that hard at all. But if a Democrat proposes ad, everybody in Washington would be like, don't do it. That's outrageous. That's low. When they go low, we go high.

We make ads that no one cares about. No, we don't hit them where it hurts because then we might accidentally win. Why don't you do this against DeSantis and all the? DeSantis just being a so-called Democrat by 20 points in Florida. Why didn't he run the ad about DeSantis wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare? Because the Democrats are paid to lose, a bunch of total and utter losers. This is how you fight dirty. This is how you fight hard.

The putting fingers nickname is going to be absolutely devastating. If DeSantis even bothers to show up, throw his hat in the ring, run, and make it to a debate, it's going to be crippling. People loved meatball rum, but I think pudding fingers is even more devastating. I seriously think this is the best political ad I have ever seen. It's definitely the most effective. And to Jenks point, Democrats would never do this type of ad. They're scared of the repercussions. They don't want to go low. They want to rise above it. No, you want to know why this ad works beyond pointing out that Ron DeSantis is touching a,

you know, a third rail of politics. It's that people shared it because it's so absurd. It got millions of free views today. They didn't have to put any money behind it yet. And it's already getting millions of views. That is an effective ad. And Democrats are just scared of doing that go for sensational go a little low it's okay no one's gonna people clearly don't care if they still love trump people don't care about norms and standards and respectability in these politics they want sensational it's like wrestling just give them what they want and they're going to react to it yeah as the the caveat that i would add is ideally as long as what you're saying is also accurate which explicitly this is but implicitly is but implicitly is

not. Let me, let me bring it down. So is he right to point out that Ron DeSantis has supported these cuts? He has. He voted in favor of symbolic Republican budget plans in the early 2010s that would have cut benefits and raised the eligibility age for both Social Security and Medicare to 70, which is just devastating. But it also is implying that Trump doesn't want to do that stuff, which is where the lie comes in. They left that part out. Each of Trump's White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs. So not hypotheticals, he tried to do it when he was actually in power. Asked by CNBC back in January 2020 if cuts to entitlements would be something he'd consider for a second term. He said,

at the right time, we will take a look at that. Asked directly about cuts to Medicare. He said, we're going to look. And he even said in 2020 that if we win, the payroll tax will be rescinded, which I think it's important to point out is how we pay for Social Security. So I have a feeling you might need to cut it a little bit if there was no money going into it. Final thoughts. Yeah, final thought now that I've recovered a lung. So Jordan's point about how it's going to go viral and has gone viral and look, we're covering, everybody's covering it and bringing in extra millions of dollars is such a great point.

And no Democratic consultant will make that point. You know why? Because they don't get paid on it. because Seltas get paid 15% for ad spends. They don't get paid 15% of nothing when things go viral. So corruption is also killing the Democratic Party. And now that we've shown you that disgust again like three or four times, I realized the last dirty trek embedded in that ad,

him licking those three fingers over and over again was very phallic. And so for Democrats, They might think who cares, but for Republicans, they're like, ah, something instinctual is going to kick in for them and they're going to go, not DeSantis, not DeSantis, right? So Donald Trump, he knows how to bludgeon people. You got to give them that. Yeah. All right. We are out of time. So everybody check out damage report. One o'clock Eastern every day, Monday through Friday. That's John's show. It's terrific. You'll get to check out Game Busters. on Twitch.tv slash Tiwit later today with Jordan Ewell. Okay, so that's our Twitch channel. Make sure you check that out. Thank you guys. You're awesome. And in the second hour, even more devastating news. So come right back. subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.