The Young Turks - Pushing Putin's Buttons

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S. arms for strikes inside Russia. Maggie Haberman reports that the race for Trump’s Treasury Secretary has turned into a ""knife fight"" after a top contender reportedly ""got on Trump’s nerves."" Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski shared details of a ""personal"" visit with Trump aimed at ""restarting communications."" A Financial Times analysis revealed that around one-third of all funds raised by Trump’s campaign and allied groups came from billionaires, compared to 6% for Harris’s campaign groups. Trump allies are urging him to fire the FBI director early and appoint loyalist Kash Patel." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jake U Granite Kisparan with you guys, live from the Polymarket Studio here in LA. So we've got a lot of news for you guys, Joe Biden trying to stir something up before he leaves apparently. Makes no sense at all. Donald Trump appointing a lot of folks, some mentally unstable and talk about that. Others are more complicated. So tons of interesting stories coming out

for you guys today. And as usual, we'll try to have some fun as we cover them. All right, Casper. Well, why don't we start with some international news? And for today, we're not going to dive into the ongoing slaughter that's taking place in Gaza. Let's focus a little bit about this new change in U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and their ongoing fight against Russia. That war is not going Ukraine's way right now, with sustained and slow losses along the Eastern Front. Perhaps a reason for the stark and significant policy change from the White House Sunday.

Sources telling CNN that the U.S. President Joe Biden has finally given Ukraine the go-ahead to use long-range American weapons to strike inside Russia. Today there's a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. Anonymous, an ominous message from the leader of Ukraine of Lord of Mir Zelensky. Now, President Joe Biden is now allowing Ukraine to use, you know, serious offensive weaponry, including long-ranged missiles made by the United States to attack Russia for the first time. So here's more on the specific weapons that the U.S. will be supplying Ukraine, and why this is such a big deal?

The MGM-148-Tacombs, as you mentioned, the army tactical missile system has a range of around 180 to 190 miles. And what it can do is it can attack things like ammunition depots, troop concentrations, logistical centers, all of those kinds of things that could resupply a front line. So what the purpose of this is, from the Biden administration standpoint, is to actually make it possible for the Ukrainians to prevent the Russians and the North Koreans from attacking the Ukrainian concentrations in Kursk, which is the. territory of Russia that Ukraine has occupied since August. So these missiles are designed to go in and to take out those kinds of things like those logistics installations that I described. And they're designed to do this in a very efficient, very lethal manner. Now Biden's decision to allow for this type of offensive weaponry to be used in Russia or against Russia also clears the way for other allies like the UK and France to provide

similar weapons to Ukraine if they so choose to do so. The Biden administration also started supplying several hundred attackums, that's the name of the weapon that we're talking about here, to Ukraine specifically for use on Ukrainian territory that had been occupied by the Russians. And that includes, of course, the Crimean Peninsula. And it's unclear how many of those long-range missiles currently remain in Ukraine's arsenal. The Biden administration's justification, for doing this is now North Korea is supplying troops to Russia in order to carry out this war against Ukraine. They've allegedly deployed 10,000 North Korean troops. American officials said the missiles were likely to be deployed at least initially against combined

Russian and North Korean troops in territory Ukraine has captured in the Kursk region of southern Russia. Ukraine invaded Kursk in part to basically take control. of Russian land, it could use as leverage in peace talks, it could deploy longer range strikes to try to safeguard its position ahead of any negotiations Trump might push for. And of course, we all know Donald Trump wants the war to come to an end. And so they see Kursk as their bargaining chip in possible peace negotiations. Yeah, so there's a couple of reasons why they might do this. So one is the one that is being officially put forward here, you know, it'll get

of some leverage in our negotiations, it's plausible, but it could also massively escalate things. So that's also plausible. I'm gonna come back to that in a second. I saw another explanation, which I thought to be hilarious, that well, maybe this could cause the Russians to retreat before Trump comes in. No, that's not gonna happen. That's a ridiculous proposition. Well, look, put Trump aside, Russia's winning the war. They now have occupied a fifth of Ukraine. They have made slow and steady gains throughout this war. There are civilians in Ukraine who do not want to fight this war and they're being forced to fight it. I mean, Boris Johnson, meeting with Vladimir Zelensky and discouraging him early on in the war from engaging in

peace negotiations was the biggest mistake imaginable. Yes. So the West pushed Zelensky further in a war. They pushed Eastern Europe further in a war. But by the way, if you're a right winger, being pro Russia is not an anti-war position. They started the war. You can't be anti-war if you start a war. So look, there's plenty of blame on all sides. Russia deserves a great lion's share of the blame for doing the actual invasion in the first place, killing all those people, et cetera. Now, that's not the question. The question is, what are we going to do now, right? So what is most likely is that when Trump comes in, he's going to force them into a settlement by threatening to take away all their funding and weapons, in which case they would be screwed.

So, but now the problem is that Russia already knows that, right? So what is most likely going to happen is that Russia is going to keep about, you know, 20%, maybe, whatever the percentage is of Ukraine. So their invasion is going to be partly rewarded. And that sucks, and I hate it, but that is the most likely outcome. Now, there's another possible reason why Biden ordered these missiles, allowed the missiles to strike inside Russia, which is. further escalation and why would escalation help?

Well, it wouldn't help us, it wouldn't help the Russians or the Ukrainians, but it would help the military industrial complex. And they would love to dig us further into this war so that it's harder to get out later. And so look, I get the price of getting out, which is that you lose a piece of Ukraine and you encourage Putin because he, that's a second country, third time, second country, he's gone in somewhere, grab land and gotten away with it. By the way, it also encourages Netanyahu, who now look. looks at Putin goes, hey, apparently you could just steal people's land.

So we always wanted Gaza and West Bank, maybe we'll go steal that and Trump's gonna let us steal that too, right? But nevertheless, escalating now when Russia is not going to retreat and causing a major escalation that might dig all of us back into this war is not a good idea. It's a terrible idea ordered by Biden, I suppose, or whoever the hell is in charge. It's notable though that civilians tragically have been killed in this war, and I do think it's notable that while tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Gaza, a tiny stretch of land by the IDF Israeli defense forces, in the case of Ukraine, Russia has killed

11,700 civilians. But Russia, public enemy number one, according to the United States government. The Israeli government, it doesn't matter how many innocent civilians they kill in Gaza or the West Bank or in Lebanon, we're gonna back them no matter what, regardless of what administration or which political party is in charge in this country. That's the reality of the situation. Just a side note on that. Now real quick, how has Russia responded to this new foreign policy by the Biden administration? Well, Vladimir Putin back in September had said this. The use of long range weapons will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European

countries, are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us. And so that was in September. Now that the decision has been made by Biden, Putin and the Russian government is saying, we will respond and the response will be tangible, basically continue. on with their threats, the Biden administration, again, justifying this because they claim, well, this is a new front in the war. We're now dealing with North Korea's involvement in supporting

Russia. And what? Why does that make a difference? I don't think it does. Like, oh, Russia is being more aggressive. They were already plenty of aggressive. They invaded the country and took giant amount of land. Bring in North Koreans, so what? I don't, like, they're just looking for any excuse to make the war bigger and worse. So one of our members, Preston Parks, wrote in Biden locking in his pro-war legacy. That's right. He's going to be known as the guy who authorized Iraq war, who authorized Israel to kill anyone they like, take any land they like.

Now, saying to Ukraine, maybe you start a giant war with Russia. By the way, and Anna's right, it's not just this needlessly step that takes it much greater escalation, but also in the beginning, we told Russia that we would not encroach on Eastern Europe. And we did that when the Soviet Union was falling apart to assure them. We assured among other people Putin that we wouldn't. And then we encroached and we encroached and we got next to his grandmother's house. And then we said, oh my God, we are so innocent. So we're not innocent at all. And we should not have gone into Eastern Europe with NATO. It was totally needless, right? And especially threatening it in Ukraine.

was just criminal negligence, okay? Now having said that again, nothing justifies the invasion, but also nothing justifies a last minute escalation on your way out other than to say don't get it twisted. The Democratic Party now loves war. Joe Biden, our standard bearer, loves war, and we'd like to lose further elections because the American people hate war, but we're the new neocons. So congratulations Joe Biden for screwing the Democratic Party and the American voters one more time.

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shocking between different potential candidates. At one point during what the source is described as a massive blowup, Musk accused Epstein of leaking details of Trump's transition, including a personnel picks to the media. Epstein responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about. This comes amid new reports that Musk is also becoming a source of infighting the Trump transition team surrounding the choice for Treasury Secretary. Well, at the very center of that infighting is the battle for

who Donald Trump will choose to be his treasury secretary. And there is some significant disagreement between Elon Musk and others who are involved in Trump's transition process. Now initially, as we had reported earlier, Donald Trump was considering two specific individuals for the role. That includes Howard Lutnik, who is the CEO of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald. That is the individual who is in charge of Trump's transition. And it appears that is the individual that Elon Musk would like Trump to choose as Treasury Secretary. The other individual is Scott Besant, who's the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital, and he's also a former money manager for George Soros.

But apparently Trump has actually soured on both of these individuals and is now looking to interview other contenders at Mar-Lago this week. Lutnik, who has been running Trump's transition operation, has gotten on Trump's nerves lately, Trump has privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnik has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends. Now, look, this is an anonymous source who spoke to the New York Times. I don't know how real that this is. What I do know is that if you're in charge of the transition process and you have to manage

the transition process, yeah, there's a lot of leadership that goes into that. So if Trump is, in fact, annoyed by him, I'm curious. what kind of manipulation he's referring to, but with that in mind, a person familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity described the battle between Lutnik and Bacent as a knife fight with Lutnik as the primary aggressor. And as for Bacent, he is being considered, he's still being considered for the role. But he could also be chosen by Trump to lead a different government agency, maybe the leader of the national economic council, we don't know yet. But what's interesting is Elon Musk's role in this entire so-called knife fight, because

Musk is not a fan of Bessent. He calls him business as usual, and he's not in favor of Trump choosing him. He posted on next writing, would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for Donald Trump to consider feedback. My view is that Bacent is a business as usual. choice, whereas Howard Lutnik will actually enact change. Business as usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need to change one way or another. These are two incredibly wealthy Wall Street guys. I mean, I'm very curious, Jank, why he favors Lutnik so much more. Because I see them as very similar.

Go ahead. Yeah, I have theories. So first of all, you should check out the interview I did with it. We put up on Young Turks on YouTube over the weekend. Tim Newell is CEO of Aspiration. Aspiration is a great company, one of our sponsors. But he worked with Elon Musk at Tesla and Solar City, and that's why I want to talk to him. And he said, we all knew people would go in meetings with Elon Musk, but we didn't know

who was coming out. So Elon Musk is not a guy who is overly kind and caring when it comes to getting him, like To be, like, the most generous interpretation to Elon Musk is to get the job done, right? So he's no nonsense, period, and he fires people at great velocity, okay? And everybody knows this because of what he did at Twitter. So when he, and he's being the richest man in the world and the CEO of all those major companies, he's not used to people debating him, right? And Tim also talked about that.

Well, a lot of debates, okay? you do this and you do it lightning quick, otherwise I fire you, is his modus operandi, right? So, so when he has to deal with Boris Epstein, right? And you remember he's the guy that in 2016 was doing like a podcast or something. I do. And he yelled, Saramis! Like, that's him, right? So he's, but he's been loyal to Trump all along.

Does he have his own agenda? Of course, right? Has he been linking to the press as Elon Musk's suggestion? I'd be surprised if he wasn't. They almost all do, right? So of course that clash is coming. That clash is inevitable. Based just on personalities alone, and Elon always getting what he wants, right?

But with Trump in the room, you can't always get what you want. And so this is going to be something that's going to keep on happening. Okay, now, to the substance of the Treasury picks, you could tell, first of all, as soon as I knew that Musk was on Lutnik's side, my educated guess was that Lutnik is in favor. of Bitcoin and crypto and all that stuff. And in just the pictures we were showing you, he was shown speaking at a Bitcoin conference and convention, right? So because Elon has a plan, I don't know what it is with crypto and he cares a lot about it and it's not an accident that he called his whatever the hell government organization

that Trump is going to create for him, Doge, and that's, you know, named after his own cryptocurrency. So it's, to me, I would be shocked if Luttoning didn't do whatever Musk wanted on crypto, but apparently maybe Bessent won't necessarily do that. Now, what is what they have in common is Donald Trump is not going to pick one of the poor to be a secretary of treasury. No. He doesn't, in fact, he said that in this first term. He said, I don't want people that are poor in my cabin. I don't want, I only want rich because they're successful. No, he's made that clear in this upcoming cabinet, in fact. And for whatever reason, he's eyeing various Wall Street billionaires for these roles.

And yeah, you're right, he sees their success on Wall Street as like one of the main reasons why he would want them to serve in his cabinet. And in particular, in, you know, the treasury role. And so there are two other individuals, Jank, that he's considering that I want to talk a little bit about because the New York Times is reporting that the president elect is impressed with billionaire Mark Rowan, another individual who has close ties to Wall Street. He's the chief executive and co-founder of Apollo Global Management. But this is my favorite. This is my absolute favorite. Trump has also remarked that Kevin Warsh is smart and handsome.

Oh, Joe, that's what we needed a treasury secretary. A good looking feller. Obviously, that made me want to look him up and see if he's high. And you know what, he's fine, I will allow it. That's all right, but yeah, I get maybe he looks better for us. Anyway, who cares, who cares? But Trump, he's like, is that a central casting? Okay, so guys, why does Trump want billionaire Wall Street guys as his Treasury Secretary when he was a populist? Because he's always wanted to be in the club, the two reasons, that's the first.

And so those guys run the club, Cantor Fitzgerald, Apollo, management. By the way, notice that Besant is a former money manager for George Soros. Now, I don't have a problem with that, but I heard the right wing has a problem with that, right? Right, exactly. So, so, but all these guys are the same. Exactly. Yeah, there's no difference between them other than maybe how much they're going to let Elon do crypto scams or whatever, right? But for Trump, he wants to be in the club. So he's like, yay, I get to pick one of the Wall Street billion. Oh, and they're going to come kiss my ass. Who's in the club now, bitches. But didn't he pick a Wall Street billionaire last time around? How did that work out for him?

Well, he perfectly fine. You know why? Because he did giant corporate tax cuts, just added 40% to our debt. And then all those guys then gave him more money this time around. And he won re-election. So, I mean, it's screwed over the country. Two trillion dollars went straight to corporate coffers and out of our pockets, in essence, over the long run. But it worked out great for Trump. So he's going to do again. He's going to do another corporate tax cut. That's why he's bringing the guys who would benefit most from them. But there's a second reason why. The second reason is, once he's out of office, you're gonna want a couple of billionaire friends

who might help you out from time to time, right? So whoever the Treasury Secretary is, they're going to be 100% in favor of a corporate robbery of this country, and that's exactly what they'll execute. All right, when we come back from the break, we'll talk a little bit about the hosts over at Morning Joe, having a delightful dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago after referring to him as fascist. Interesting. We'll be right back. 57 and any color you like, they just got monthly membership through TYT.com, which makes sense because it's 20% off right now for monthly membership there.

t.yat.com slash team is a good way to get there. And then Bashar Ahmad Diamond and R all just became members by hitting that beautiful join button below the video on YouTube and Women A.F. Thank you for gifting five young tourist memberships. You guys are all amazing. I love this community. Anna. Well, let's get into an interesting change that you make. We have noticed over at Morning Joe on MSNBC. Joe and I went to Marilago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years.

And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so. What we did agree on was to restart communications. My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he in the United States profoundly disagreed. That's a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. Well, the hosts over at Morning Joe are facing quite a bit of backlash after they decided to visit Donald Trump for a delightful meal over at Marlago, following Trump's victory in the presidential election, of course. And this is after they basically spent years calling him a dangerous dictatorial man.

Now, they said that they talked about many issues, including abortion, mass deportations, and the threats of retribution against political and media opponents. And here's their explanation as to why they decided to work with Trump after years of fearmongering about his authoritarian nature. in this meeting president trump was tearful he was upbeat he seemed interested in finding common ground with democrats on some of the most divisive issues and for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times especially between us i guess i would ask back why wouldn't we five years of political warfare has deeply divided washington and the country we have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions

and words in the coarsening of public debate. But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, and January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote. Joe and I realize it's time to do something different. And that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him. Now, President-elect Donald Trump has also confirmed that this meeting did in fact take place. And in an interview with Fox News, he says many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication. In many ways, it's too bad that it wasn't done long ago. He added that they congratulated me on running a great

and flawless campaign, one for the history books, which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard, that's what she said, perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history. Now according to Fox News, the president elect also said that he has an obligation to the American public and to our country itself to be open and available to the press, admirable thing to say. But then he continues, if not treated fairly, however, that will end. The media is very important to the long-term success of the United States of America. Fox and Friends also made sure to heap praise on Trump for agreeing to meet with the Morning Joe crew, calling him magnanimous.

And now Mika and Joe are getting a lot of backlash, which will give you a little taste of in just a minute. But before you guys hear everyone else's comments about this, you should hear what Jank has to say. Jank, what are your thoughts? Yeah, so look, this one's complicated for two reasons. So first, should you reach out on things that you agree on? Well, of course you should. So I've never understood this thing where people that are either Democrats are on the left,

say no, out of spite, we shouldn't work with Trump on things that we agree with him on, like anti-war. Why? Why not take the win? to win, right? So if Trump agrees with me on something, I'm not going to fight him just because he's Trump around the other team. That's crazy, right? I would in fact help to try to get those things passed as long as we agree, right? Now, do you think that Morning Joe and I mean, Joe Scarborough and Mika Prisinski went there to fight for paid family leave,

fight for the anti-war position, fight for some policy? No, they went to go fight for their own ass. 100%. So all they're doing is kissing up to him now to get access. So proof's always going to be in the pudding. So you see us, you'll see us criticize Trump and you'll see us agree on the rare occasions that we agree. And you saw us doing that when we, during Trump won, during all of these years, right? Those guys on the other hand, Trump is Hitler, Trump is Hitler. Oh, Trump won. Time to kiss some ass. Go down tomorrow, go have some breakfast, et cetera. And Trump said, well, we agreed on some cabinet picks. I'm sure you did, the corporate ones, Rubio, Stephanic, et cetera. They were probably like, oh, corporate

tax cuts, they're gonna be right back on board with Trump and as you'll see in a minute, right? So you think they're gonna hold them accountable? No, they, their whole shtick is kissed the ass of the powerful. So this is not at all surprising. Well, Joe Scarborough was very friendly to Donald Trump when he was first running for president in 2016. I don't know what exactly happened that made their relationship go south. Scarborough certainly soured on. Donald Trump, but look, I think that it's likely, you're right, that they want access to Trump. There's also some possibility that they're genuinely worried that Trump might come after them because he has threatened people in the media who have, in his words, been unfair to him.

So who knows? I mean, look, Mika Brzynski just a few weeks ago was on the view breaking down about the prospect of Donald Trump winning the election because she was so afraid of the fascist taking over. Yeah, and I thought the same thing, this is much lower probability, in my opinion. But it's not impossible that they thought, yeah, he might lock up his political opponents. So let's make sure that we're not part of the resistance that we go tell him we will serve him loyally as long as he doesn't do anything to us, right? And so why did they turn on him? Trump did his usual personal insults to Mika Bresenski, et cetera.

And so I don't, right, I don't mind Mika and Joe and Joe Scarborough catching feelings over that. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that. And also they're on MSNBC. So they had to pretend to be against Donald Trump. In reality, they don't care at all. All they care about is tax cuts for the rich and their establishment and the status quo. And if Trump gives it to them, they're ecstatic about it.

If the Democrats give it to them, they're ecstatic about it. And as long as they're at the epicenter of the establishment, they're happy as they can be. They've never really cared. So here is how everyone else reacted to the news that they had that dinner at Mar-Lago. The grotesque, the grotesque fawning and rationalizing for a man who is promising in his words to be an autocrat. A general who served as Donald Trump's longest serving chief of staff said, yes, he's a fascist. We have Donald Trump, who was hostile for so long to NATO, who embraced authoritarian thugs. and the least democratic and the most authoritarian leader in Europe,

Victor Orvon, this is Donald Trump's hero in Europe. It's who he says he wants to be like. This is not a reach. I can go back and talk about Nazi Germany and I do it without any concerns whatsoever. And if people can't start drawing the parallels, well, you're just stupid or you have your head in the sand or you're one of them. Do I think that Donald Trump's going to be allowed to line people up against the wall and shoot them? I know he'd like to. I know him, and I've known him for a long time, and we can see this.

He would like to. He's not going to be allowed to. But if he says, I'm going to take the FEC and I'm going to bring it into the White House and I'm going to decide who's going to be on TV and who's not going to be on TV. Believe him. So all those comments that Mika Brzynski and Joe Scarborough made prior to the election has now led to people dunking on them. And I will allow it because it's totally justified.

Scott Jennings writes on Twitter, Hitler getting a lot more meeting requests than I would have thought. You have Republicans against Trump saying, this is why people don't trust the mainstream media anymore, bingo. Joe and Mika, who constantly attack fascist Trump on their show, went to Mara Lago to talk with Trump over the weekend. And look, some Trump fans felt differently. They see that this could be just a new era in America where the media is a little more fair

to Trump. So Pierce Morgan, for instance, says, wow, wasn't expecting this, but good for them. America needs to come together again. But the damage has been done. Okay, so I look, you know how I felt about the fear mongering that was taking place among Democrats and, you know, their mouthpieces in cable news, just lean into fear, scare the bejesus out of American voters about Trump. He's Hitler, he's a fascist, he's gonna come for you, he's gonna put us in internment camps.

Not only does this totally deteriorate trust in the media, but even worse, look, we oftentimes talk about right wingers who use violent rhetoric that could inspire people who are not all there, right? People who might have some mental issues, mental illnesses, to carry out acts of violence. So how is it any different when Democrats do it? It's not okay, like calling him Hitler and like talking about like how he's going to put people, you know, in internment camps or line, he would like to line people up and shoot them. Yeah. So look, here's, you know where I drew the line. I drew the line between fascist and Nazi and Hitler, right? So I never said Nazi or Hitler because the Nazis killed 13 million people and had gas chambers.

And Hitler drove that. To me, and as we talked about on the show many times, fascist is one of those words that people put meaning into. But I used it because I don't know what else to use for a guy who says, I don't care if I lost the election. I want to stay in. I want to use fake electors. I want to steal the election. And by the way, if they say hang my pens, I don't mind so much. Those things happen.

I'm never taking it back, okay? I'm not in these guys in the ring kissing business, okay? So those, in my opinion, were fascist tendencies. Now, having said that, I didn't think he was Hitler killing people up against the wall. They did. Joe Scarborough did. So were you worried when you went to Mar-a-Lago instead of getting some English muffins and orange juice that he was?

going to line you up against the wall and execute you? No, you weren't, were you? So was he Hitler or wasn't he? I still to this day I'm worried that he's not going to leave or that the next guy or J.D. Vance or whatever is not going to leave because he already did it once. I have empirical evidence about his wrongdoing and I'm never going to change my mind on it. But these guys, man, just like that, Hitler, you went to have breakfast with Hitler? That is amazing.

Okay, so now let's talk about how do you work within this situation? So I was on Pierce Morgan this morning, and he's got a bunch of us, they were all Democrats, all fighting, okay? So I'm fighting against Harry Sisson and Juan Williams and my brother, Professor Alan Lickman, who got all emotional, okay? He was odd, oh my God, I got to watch this. Okay, and I'm sorry, but I literally jingled jangled keys in his face. Okay, so you guys will see that, it's fun, right? But the one thing we all agreed on was when Pierce Morgan was like, yeah, you've got to hold the Democrats accountable. And then as if he's going to hold Trump accountable as well.

And we're like, brother, you haven't held Trump accountable ever, ever. And he always points out like, oh, well, I once criticized him slightly. He's so happy that Trump is back in. So that's why he's happy that morning. Joe is going to kisses Trump's ass, et cetera. His criticism of Trump has been microscopic. And for Kamala Harris's nonstop criticism seem, look, it's not balance to just pretend to be a moderate. and only criticize one side.

So Morning Joe made that mistake with the Democrats, never ever criticize them. I think Pierce, look, I'm a little too tough on peers because he has at least has interesting conversations on, right? But he barely ever criticizes Trump. That's true. I'm curious to see what he's going to do in the second term, if he's just going to play for access. But can I jump in?

Sorry to interrupt you, but I have to get this point out. Look, for me, yes, it is annoying when the critique is only focused on one side. But that is not my main issue here. My main issue is that the Democratic Party with the help of media figures like Mika Brazinski and Morning Joe, thought it was totally fine to offer their base nothing, nothing to vote for, and instead just lean into the fear mongering, fear, fear, fear, fear, be scared, be scared, be scared, but that was it, that was all they gave us. And it makes me angry, okay, it should not be justified.

The Democratic Party lost because they deserve to lose. They did not make a case to the American people as to why they would be fundamentally better than Donald Trump policy-wise. That's the issue. That's what makes me angry. Well, you'll see in the Piers show from today, Juan Williams blames the voters, Alan Lickman blames disinformation in Elon Musk. It's just pathetic.

Take some personal responsibility, Democrats, for once in your lives. Take personal responsibility. If you offer nothing to the electorate, they're not going to vote you in. That's the way it works. So the people I blame were Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, because I'm pretty sure they were in charge, and I blame Democratic Party leaders who constantly lose to Donald Trump. Wow. But that's like shocking idea in the Democratic Party.

Blaming the leaders who actually lost? No, no, no, no, no, we have to protect them. Anyway, back to me. Okay, let's focus on me, okay? Let's take you here. No, seriously, guys. So that's Peers, that's, you know, Morning Joe and how they all react to it. And Anna read you how folks are reacting in general.

For me, I wrote on social media over the weekend, I said, look, if you really want to cut the government, I'm here for it, right? So how? The Pentagon never passes an audit, says they can't find $400 billion. I'll find it and give it back to the American people. So you actually want to cut the government by $2 trillion, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump? I'll take care of 20% overnight, okay? And by the way, guys, this is really important. In the old days, the right wing reaction to that on Twitter would have been like,

get out of you, you don't want you some, this, that the other thing, right? Overwhelming positive reaction this time. The right wing populists are different than you think they are, okay? So they all came in and was like, that sounds pretty good. We know Jank doesn't like Trump, but we also know he'd love to cut the Pentagon, and I bet he'd do it, right? Right, you want somebody to cut the Pentagon, you're a guy, okay? Yeah, and they just failed their seventh audit in a row. Yeah, so if you say to me, well, would you go in and work with Donald Trump,

even though you've said these terrible things about him and Elon Musk and you've said questionable things about him in order to do the thing that you've always wanted to do for these several last several decades? Yeah, okay, is that complicated? you're going to let me do the thing that I've been dying to do for two decades and actually bring hundreds of billions of dollars back to the American people, the number one robbery is at the Pentagon because they say, oh, if you try to cut a single dime, you're going to make everybody unsafe.

You know, national security is on the line where you're going to make them unsafe. Everybody's going to die. So that's why they loaded up with pork and more pork and wrap it in further pork, right? Let me at him, put me in coach, that is productive because that is actually getting to real agreement, anti-war, anti-corruption agreement that we've always believed in. And by the way, the other thing I would say is that puts them to the test. Did you really mean the cuts? Did you really mean anti-corruption?

Did you really mean anti-war, right? But going over there and kissing his ass and now doing propaganda for him without getting anything in return, that's not negotiation. That's not policy, that's not on behalf of your viewers or the voters. That's just on behalf of your own elite ass. 100%. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the bribes that took place during the presidential election.

We've been talking about that, but now we have a comparative analysis in regard to which candidate took the most money from billionaire donors. We'll be right back. All right back on TY TY TYNC Anna and Jane are with you. Jane, thanks for joining Anna. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the billionaire donors in the 2024 presidential race and which one of the presidential candidates received the most amount in campaign funds from these billionaires. So let's talk about it. While Kamala Harris certainly outraised Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election,

the real question is which one of the two candidates took the most money from billionaire donors? Well luckily the Financial Times did their own analysis and the findings are fascinating. So they report that Trump is particularly dependent on US elites with about a third of the money raised by the campaign and allied groups coming from billionaires compared to about 6% of the funds raised by Harris aligned groups. So while Harris did take billionaire money, according to the Financial Times analysis, Donald Trump took far more. In fact, that billionaire money made up about a third of the money he raised for the campaign. Now billionaires have donated, this is insane,

at least $695 million or about 18% of the total money raised during this election cycle. Now keep in mind that this analysis was from about a month ago, so they don't have all of the campaign funds included. So the final month of the campaign is not included in this analysis, and the percentages might be out of date. But they're still extremely relevant, especially in Trump's case as the winner of this election, because as my dad likes to say, the cash is talking, okay? And what are these billionaires expecting in return for, you know, shelling out all this cash? So real quick, I'll just talk a little bit about who the top billionaire donors have been for Donald Trump. So obviously one of his biggest donors was Elon Musk. But then there's

also a billionaire by the name of Timothy Mellon, who gave a whopping $125 million to the make America Great Again PAC, which of course is the PAC supporting Donald Trump. Now it's not specifically clear what Mellon wants in exchange for his massive campaign donation, but he was originally a supporter of RFK Jr. He gave RFK Jr. 25 million dollars, you know, or at least $25 million to a PAC supporting RFK Jr. before he dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump. And Mellon has also praised Trump's governance from his first term. So in 2020, during an interview, here's what Mellon had to say about Trump, quote, he's done the things he promised to or tried to do the things he promised to in trade and writing the balance between

our country and the rest of the world, especially China. Now, we can also piece together what his political ideology is if we follow enough of the breadcrumbs. So in 2015, in his autobiography, he wrote, this of government programs, quote, for delivering their votes in the federal elections, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies. Food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on and on and on. The largesse is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass. Now, this is a, like, billionaire, like air from the Gilded Age, literally. So it's interesting how he views himself versus people who might have fallen on hard times

and might need to rely on government programs that have been funded by we, the workers. So, Jank, thoughts. Yeah, so I saw a different report that had more updated numbers and they had Tim Mellon at around $170 million and Miriam Adelson at about 137 million. And the count probably keeps going and going because they report more they're spending closer to the election as we go. So what is, first of all, on Tim Mellon, I find his comments they're hilarious because he's like, these poor, all they want is the government's largesse, whereas I'm only looking for trillions of

dollars in tax cuts. Oh, I see. I see how the pores of the problem. So these wealthy heirs have been asking for tax cuts their whole lives. And that's pretty much the only thing they've ever done. done with their lives. And so the second part that was amusing was he's like, oh, these poor people that are getting welfare, et cetera, they're riding off the work of hardworking people.

Brother, you're an heir. What hard work did you do? Your money was left to you from three or four generations ago, and you sat on your ass giving a lot of it to Republicans, so they'll give you bigger tax cuts. As far as I know, that's the only thing you've ever done with your life. So please spare me the fake outrage about how poor people in America have it too good. And you're the one that's suffering, okay? So now, you know, what did Miriam Aedelson get?

We know she got team Miriam. That's Elise Stefanik, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Waltz. They're all neocon warmongers who are going to support Israel. Trump gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom after her husband gave him $200 million in the last two elections. And there's one other funny element of that. When asked, why did you give her the Medal of President? Presidential Medal of Freedom, when she hasn't done anything in her life, he said, well, it's because she gives a lot to charity. Which charity? Pro-Israel groups. Oh, wow. So a pro-Israel donor bribed you into supporting Israel, and then you gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for giving a lot of pro-Israel bribes. Wow, that seems like a really compelling case. So guys, overall here, Kamala Harris took tons of money from billionaires and corporations and dark money packs, and she took more money

than Trump, okay? But Trump took a bigger percentage from the billionaires. She raised 6% of her money from billionaires, he raised 34%. If you think Trump thinks, oh, that money's not important, I won't serve them. Well, you're empirically incorrect, he's already started to serve them. And Team Miriam is a perfect example, and he said to Elon, his third biggest donor, you get half the government, you cut anything you like. So this is a giant giveaway the donors in public in front of everybody's face. And mainstream media and the Democrats won't call it out because they love the donor class.

And right wing won't call it out because they love Trump. We're the only ones calling it out. No, it might be possible that he decided to put his financial weight behind Donald Trump because he already likes some of the things that Trump has to say. He's very much in favor of the anti-immigration measures that Donald Trump is promising to take, including mass deportations. Just to give you an example of something he has said back in the day, this is from 2010. Let's go to Graphics 6 here.

In 2010, Mellon donated about $1.5 million to the state of Arizona to defend SB 1070, a controversial anti-immigration bill. That was the bill that would allow for police to essentially stop individuals and ask for their papers. Okay, so. Whether they had any evidence that they were immigrants or citizens. Oh, that guy looks Latino. Let's stop him and ask for his papers. Yeah, this guy wrote a whole chapter about race in his book.

So he basically, he's like, keep America white and rich. Wow, you sound like such a humanitarian. So, you know, this is, these are the types of billionaire donors we're talking about, right? Another or other billionaire donors include the U-Line family who gave around $84 million to pro-Trump super PACs. So combined, let's take a look at this. So let's look at this chart which shows Kamala Harris raised just over a billion. million dollars, and outside groups supporting her campaign raised just shy of $650 million. So Jake, I actually want you to stop real quick and explain what's meant by the outside groups.

Yeah, so when you got messages from her campaign and you gave or a giant corporation gave or whatever it was, a corporation can't give directly, they have to give through the packs, but corporate executives can give to her. So what that was was, that's her direct. money and she can spend it any way she likes the others are hey I maxed out to her but I want to funnel a lot more money to her so I'm gonna use a pack to do it and some release their donors names so that's that's not fine I hate it I don't want it at all but at least you get to see someone where the money came from some are dark money packs so you can't see where the money came from

and so they're using remember of Kamala Harris back in 2020 when she was pretending to be a progressive, said that she wouldn't take any corporate pack money. Well, there's about $600 billion, $600 million, not purely corporate pack money, but a ton, mostly corporate pack money. So she never meant a word she said. So again, we're honest and principled. The establishment takes giant sums of money from corporate donors and through dark money packs, but so does Donald Trump.

And when you compare Kamala Harris to Donald Trump, let's put graphic ten. up please. So as I mentioned, you know, she raised just over a billion dollars, an outside group supported her campaign by, you know, raising $650 million on her behalf. With Donald Trump, he raised a little less than $400 million. Outside groups supporting his campaign raised just over $700 million. And both campaigns did receive millions in dark money donations. So late last month, Sludge had reported that Super PAC supporting Harris have have raised at least $195.8 million from dark money groups, this election cycle, while those backing Trump has have raised at least $23.2 million, according to a sludge analysis

of federal election commission data. So look, I do think it's fascinating to see how Kamala Harris raised so much more money in a much shorter period of time, spent all that money and then some, and it didn't help her win the election, because even with all that money that can buy you the ads, that can help you run the type of campaign that can persuade hearts and minds, if you don't have a message that resonates with the voters, that money is just gonna go to waste. And I think that's what happened with Kamala Harris. She did not make a case for herself, for the Democratic Party.

And so as Democrats lean more and more into this fundraising, and as they pat themselves on the back when they outraise, you know, their Republican opponents, keep in mind that that money is typically coming from individuals who have a conflicting agenda from the Democratic base of voters. And so it's going to continue being a problem for Democrats. They need to choose wisely. And so far, they keep choosing the money. And not only did the money not help her, it actually was counterproductive because that's what led her to put all those surrogates all over cable news saying how much she loves corporations. Exactly, yeah.

And bragging about her letter about all the corporate CEOs supporting her, that was to raise more money. Congratulations, you raise more money and it costs you the election. Super counterfeit. Look, last bit on their hypocrisy here, Democrats keep saying that they're in favor of money out of politics, are they? Because she took so much more dark money, let alone outside money and pack money than Trump did. So the Democrats, when they say they want money out of politics, other than a few people, like in this case, the squad is great on it. Rokana's great, Bernie's great, Jamie Raskin's great. Outside of those guys, they're total liars.

They love money in politics. They hope that our politics is drowned in big money that gets them elected. And now Trump, he said, oh, I want to drain the swamp. And he's like, hey, everybody can billionaires, come here, come here, I'm auctioning off the government, you get this, you get that, you get foreign policy, you get all the spending cuts and get rid of any regulator you don't like that's regulating your businesses, et cetera. This is an open auction. So finally, 800 billionaires in the country.

That's it. Out of 330 million people, there's only 800 billionaires. Microscopic. They gave 18% of all the money that was given to these two candidates. You know what that means? They're not going to listen to the guy who gave him five bucks or even 500 bucks or even 5,000 bucks. They're going to listen to where that money came from from the 800 billionaires who gave them, in such giant chunks that they bought them.

And if you're a Democrat and that breaks your heart that Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are bought, welcome to America, they're totally and utterly bought. And if you're a right winger and you think Trump is pure as a driven snow and he really wants to drain the swamp, brother, you're gonna have a very rude awakening, okay? I mean, that rude awakening. You also welcome to America. That rude awakening should have already come, but okay, final thing for me. Look, it's all fine and dandy that Miriam Aedelson has billions of dollars and millions of,

hundreds of millions of dollars to donate to Republican politicians so they carry out what's in the best interests of Israel, as opposed to the American people. But she should put a little bit of that money aside so she can reform her hairstyle from the 80s to, I don't know, I'll take the 2010s, I'll take the 2010s. We've got to take a break when we come back. We've got more news for you, including a deadly knife attack. in New York City.