The Young Turks - Rage, Rant, Riot!

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Democratic specialist, Paul Begala trashes President Biden’s decision to cancel student debt. Republicans are becoming increasingly hypocritical as they conveniently forget their forgiven debt. Trump wants his supporters not to hold back anymore. Mark Zuckerberg reveals that the FBI warned him not to post stories including Hunter Biden. Facebook allows graphic images of Russian air strikes, but not Israeli air strikes. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Unbossed with Sen. Nina Turner ▶ https://www.youtube.com/unbossedtyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq 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. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now.

I get a free Tilly Dog. Chilly Dog, not included. The Naked God. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. We're going to be. Thank you for Anna Kasparian with you guys. Anna wondered right before we got on air, how is today going to be like on the show? Well, disaster. No, no, that's not true. No one knows. Could be, could be, okay, but it could be

amazing. But one thing we know for sure is every day roller coaster ride, roller coaster, okay? So fun is about to ensue along with disaster. So I bring you Anna Kasperian. Let's get right to it. Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, it's already become a hot issue on the trail. And we saw earlier in the program that there's a divide even within the Democratic Party. For that amount of money, you could fund free pre-K for every three and four-year-old for 10 years. You do a lot more good for poor people, communities of color, and the underprivileged by doing pre-K. You could forgive all medical debt, which unlike student debt, is not freely entered into.

So Democrats, I'm a progressive. I want to help folks. But I think this is terrible policy. What is my party doing with this? They're they're disadvantaging. I think they're not helping the people that we're here to help, which is poor people and underprivileged communities. Yes, Paul. We all believe that you're a warrior for universal pre-K, for child care, for all the things that, you know, you sat idly by and allowed Senator Joe Manchin to just destroy in Biden's build back better agenda, you didn't seem to have much of a problem with that. Just, you know, business as usual, Senate parliamentarian, super important. Legislative filibuster, super important. I mean, I would want these programs, but what could we do? And now that there is

a modest plan in place to forgive a modest amount of student loan. debt per federal student loan borrower, you have this man who provides lip service for the corporate elite in this country, basically saying, well, this is wrong, it's really good to hurt the Democratic Party. And of course, he fell back on the same ridiculous talking point about how, you know, making people's lives materially better somehow is bad politics. Let's watch. I think this is terrible policy. Politics, though, we saw. Tim Ryan is in a tough race in a tough state, and he can't stand this idea. Senator Warren is all for it.

She's not exactly from a swing state in Massachusetts. Senator Catherine Cortez-Mastow from Nevada got a tough race. She doesn't like this. Michael Bennett, the senator from Colorado, he doesn't like this. Democrats, good Democrats. Sherise Davis, one of more impressive Democrats, the only Democrat in Congress from Kansas. She doesn't like it. So what is my party doing with this?

I don't know, Jank. I mean, if we're talking about Democrats facing a tough race in their congressional seats, maybe they need to rethink their economic policies. Maybe they need to rethink whether it makes sense to, you know, make people's lives materially better because it turns out that's actually a pretty popular idea among the electorate. Yeah. So I love doing this show because we get to tell you guys what actually happens. So that entire CNN segment was a mirage. It was meant to trick you. So every politician that he named is a corporate Democrat that takes massive amounts of money from lobbyists, okay? So he says, and Paul Begala is himself a massive corporate Democrat.

Okay, so now he does not say where he's getting paid. Okay, as far as we've seen, we tried to find it, but Paul Begala keeps that, you know, under his vest. And so, and CNN never clarifies who who's paying Paul Begala. Okay, so it is very, very, very likely, if you know anything about Washington, he's getting paid by massive business interests to do propaganda on their behalf. And that's why he goes on television. God, you can't help the average American. No, you can't do anything that hurts corporates. No, you can't do that. Bad policy, bad politics.

Then he names a whole bunch of other corporate Democrats who take money from campaign contributions from the same exact donors. and it makes it seem as if there's a giant portion of the Democratic Party who's united against this bad policy. And it's going to get Democrats to lose their elections. No, it's not. No, they're all kissing corporate ass to try to raise money to win their elections. But is it an unpopular issue? No, you didn't quote any polls. You didn't talk about the voters. You just said those Democrats' names as if that settles the issue. Sheree Davis, one of the biggest corporate Democrats you'll ever see in your life. go back to the first clip, he says, I'm a progressive. Are you? Are you? Are you? Because you attacked the progressive side of the Democratic Party in 100% of your

appearances. And then when it's convenient for you to pretend you're a progressive, all of a sudden, in the middle of your corporate talking point, you throw out there, I'm a progressive, but every other time you're attacking progressives. You see it's a lie, layered on top of lie, layered on top of line, but I got more. He says, oh, pre-K, do we could use the money to do pre-K or retire medical debt? Well, Paul, have you ever lobbied for that? Have you ever argued for that? If we brought that to a vote now, my guess is you would go right back on CNN and go,

oh, we can't do pre-K. I mean, I'd love to, but inflation, medical debt, those people had those debts, they had those debts, we can't do those things. Oh, we should have done paid family leave and he'll make up another thing, et cetera. It's always the same carousal goes round and round and round of things we shouldn't do to help the average American. And then he said twice there. And that's why the corporate, you know, folks who hired him sent him out like a dog to go out there and go, what's my party doing? What's my party doing? What are they doing? Nah, Democrats are always wrong if they disagree with the corporate position. God bless the Republicans. Paul McCollell is supposed to be one of the big fighters in the Democratic Party.

A fighter for what? Fighter for what? Fighter for the status quo, fighter for the financial services industry, fighter for Wall Street. I mean, he was working over at Wall Street as a consultant until 2008 during that economic collapse. But let me just jump in and make a point about why it is that we're now on the, I don't know how many days this has been going on, five days, fifth day of corporatists, both on the left and the right, okay, whining about modest, debt forgiveness for student loan borrowers. Modest, let's be abundantly clear about that, okay? $10,000 for those who took out federal loans but did not need Pell Grants during their education

and may up to 20,000 for those who did need Pell Grants during their higher education. That is to put that up against the bailouts, the US taxpayers have handed over to Wall Street after they destroyed our economy. The amount that we subsidize gas and oil companies, the amount we use to fund the research and development of pharmaceutical drugs, which does that end up really benefiting us in the future when we get price gouged by the same pharmaceutical companies? I mean, when you look at the amount of theft by these corporate, you know, these corporate goons, honestly, who see our tax dollars as their entitlement, I mean, to make this student loan forgiveness thing a big deal, like blows my mind, but there is a financial motive behind it as well, Jank, right?

Because there is loan service. There are loan servicers who service those federal loans. They make money off of that. They're probably furious that their profit is going to be maybe hurt a tiny bit as a result of this debt forgiveness. And it just, it goes on and on. But I want to make a point about how I'm not interested. I'm sorry. I'm not interested in hearing anyone who has a career in television, which Paul Begala does as a contributor on CNN. Anyone who is as old as Begala is, he's in his 60s, and this is not an ageism thing. I mentioned his age because when he went to school, he got his undergrad and his JD at the University of Texas at Austin. Let's talk about how much, you know, how much tuition and fees were when he

entered college in the year 1980. In the 1979, 1980 academic year, the average annual cost of of tuition and fees at public four year institutions was $738. If you look at the University of Texas around that time, it was close to about $200 per semester. Okay, between 1980 and 2020, the average price of tuition fees and room and board for an undergraduate degree increased 169%, according to a recent report from the Georgetown University Center on education and the workforce. In fact, he teaches over at Georgetown. Maybe Paul Begala needs to take a little trip over to their center on education and the workforce.

Maybe get a little educated on what the reality is for student loan borrowers today. And finally, we should talk a little bit about what the tuition is at the University of Texas at Austin, the same institution he went to. What's the tuition today? The tuition and fees have increased 23.75% for the last 10 years, where the 20, 2022 tuition and fees are $40,996. The undergraduate tuition and fees have raised, have been raised from 33,128 in 2012 to 40,996 in 2022. The graduate school tuition and fees have also increased from

$20,790 in 2012 to $22,944 in 2022. So I give you all that because, because whatever cute little story we hear about politicians or political pundits on cable news, whatever cutesy little, I worked hard and I paid my loans on my own. Well, you were dealing with a completely different animal. And tuition not only kept up with inflation, it far surpassed inflation in this country. And that is why we're dealing with the problem we're dealing with today. Two more fun things. So the Democrats put out of this talking point about how this mainly goes to people that are middle class and poor, right? The debt relief does, because the Republicans

are all going to the rich. The Republicans and Paul Begala, every corporate Democrat, every corrupt Democrat is going out there. It's going to the rich, it's going to the rich. And Politifax said, no, the Democratic talking point is not as accurate as the study pointed out by Republicans. Oh, wow, okay, and it was a Wharton study, okay? So, and it turns out the Wharton study shows that 75% of the debt relief is going to people making under $82,400. It's means tested. It's means tested. Why is everyone, did everyone forget? Did everyone forget that it's a means tested program that if you're making six figures, $125,000 a year, you don't qualify for any forgiveness. Do you not realize that? Like, why is everyone pretending like

We're stupid and we don't know about that portion of this deal. Yeah, and that's because everyone, and that leads it to my second point, Anna, everyone in charge hates this and because it helps the average American and it helps people making under $82,000 a year. None of them make under $82,000 a year. They all make in the millions. So they're like, they view this as their taxpayer money of the rich, the beloved rich, going to someone who's middle class, building a ladder up to the upper class. They don't want that. So they, so lo and behold, the right wing media and corporate media agree. Now this is a point that Anna makes all the time. When it's culture war issues, they all disagree and they fight like crazy.

Oh, transgender and racial and this and that, right? But when it's an economic issue, all of a sudden Tucker Carlson agrees with Anderson Cooper, who agrees with Joy Reed? And they And they all hate it. They all hate it if you start giving to the average American. So what is CNN do? They rush out Paul Begalla and he's saying, I'm a progressive, but I don't know what my party's doing, helping the average men. We should be helping corporate interests, right?

Tucker Carlson, over to you at Fox News, Fox News. What are they doing? I can't believe this. Hey, look at that. It turns out all of cable news agrees completely. They hate you and they want all the money to go to the rich. That's because they are the rich. Exactly. Well, just to really solidify what you just said, let's move over to what Republicans are saying about the debt forgiveness.

And in this video, you're going to notice that Ted Cruz does say the quiet parts out loud. Let's watch. If you are that that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans and can't get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand. Well, you just heard from Republican Senator Ted Cruz is exactly what the establishment Republican Party thinks about working people in this country, that they're bums, that they're trash, that they deserve absolutely no help from the individuals they elected into positions of power to make this country a better place. And as someone who worked as a barista while I was in college, I will just say it is far more difficult than anything Ted Cruz has ever had to do.

But nonetheless, here he is whining about workers getting a little bit of relief from the federal government in the form of student loan debt forgiveness. Let's watch. Holy cow, 20 grand. That, you know, maybe you weren't going to vote in November and suddenly you just got 20 grand. And, you know, if you can, you know, get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people. So that's what Ted Cruz thinks about people who put in an honest day work over at Starbucks, and I don't think it's a mistake that he's specifically mentioning baristas at a time when

Starbucks stores are unionizing across the country. But if you happen to be a barista, you're just, you're a bum and you're just addicted to that bong, right? Whereas Ted Cruz jank is a very hard worker who deserves all the corporate cash that flows into his campaign coffers, who deserves that massive return on investment that he sees in his stock portfolio as he engages in what, you know, you and I would be considered to do as insider trading. That is what Ted Cruz is all about, but he's not rare. He is representative of what the establishment Republican Party genuinely thinks about workers in this country. Okay, so let's get this right. Ted Cruz says, Hey, Joe Biden, by relieving the debt of working class Americans by $10,000 to $20,000 is basically

bribing them into voting for the Democratic Party. Okay, interesting. So now, you guys want to know how much the carry interest loophole was worth? Because that's the thing that every Republican, including Ted Cruz, fought tooth and nail to keep. It's a tax cut for the richest people in the country. It just happened, by the way. So Christmas Cinema and other conservative Democrats helped Ted Cruz keep this. But before we do that, let's find out what Ted Cruz's motivation is. So first we go to New York Times explaining during the early phase of the 2016 campaign, Mr. Mercer, that's Robert Mercer, donated $13 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cruz. 13 million dollars. Boy, he might

He might get $10,000 or $20,000 back. Because I hear that's what they're looking for. $10,000 or $20,000. Maybe he's even going to get $30,000. Let's find out. Mr. Mercer is in the hedge fund business, which takes advantage of the carried interest tax loophole. So how much did that save? Let's find out.

Now we go to CBS news. Private equity managers and others who gain from the carried interest tax loophole benefit to the tune of up to 18 billion. dollars annually, according to the Americans for financial reform. Every year, the Mercer's and the rest of the hedge fund on private equity businesses get $18 billion gift from Ted Cruz. And then they shovel bribes back into Ted Cruz money. Anybody think, even if you're right wing, the 13 million is that their mergers gave Cruz, anybody think that's not a bribe? Everybody that isn't mentally insane or a Washington, D.C. reporter knows that's a bribe. And in return, he didn't get $10,000 or $20,000. Then that industry got

$18 billion. You're right about the corruption. But the other thing I want to mention is that while the Democratic establishment is whining and crying about Biden doing something that is clearly popular, on the right end of the political spectrum, you have right wingers who are fearful that Biden for giving a portion of student loan debt is going to be so popular that it will galvanize Democratic voters and get them to show up to the polls. So do you get what I'm saying here, Jank? Because Paul Begala, who's a mouthpiece for the Democratic establishment, went on CNN and said, this is dangerous. This could really hurt Democratic incumbents in some of these swing districts. Then you hear the Republicans and they're shaking in their boots because they

realize, oh, actually helping people out financially, making their economic conditions better is actually incredibly popular with voters. This might actually hurt the Republican Party and help Joe Biden. It's amazing. That has two amazing components to it. So number one is, what turns out, there is something that established from Democrats will betray Joe Biden for corporate cash. Yes. So they don't, they're not just praying to the establishment, leadership. They pray to the corporate donors, okay? That's who they work for. It's just that most of the time Joe Biden also happens to work for them. But the reason we gave Joe Biden credit on this issue when it was first announced is because this was good. Joe Biden did a good one

on this one. So why do we say that when we mainly criticize it? Because we're fair. And you could tell in the corporate reaction and their dog's reaction to this story. But the second interesting part is, wait, I thought it was outrageous to criticize Democratic leadership on cable news. I thought it was outrageous to critique Joe Biden in mainstream media. All of a sudden, though, when you do it from a conservative perspective, no one minds. Totally okay. If a progressive criticize it, uh, intra-partite fighting, why did the progressives start intra-partive fighting? Wait, why don't they just bow their heads of democratic leadership?

ship, they're causing division in the party. When conservative corporate goons like Paul Begala do it, bravo, way to cause division in the party and try to get all of our candidates to lose. Way to go, Paul, that's being honest. They're such crooks. And I can't get over Ted Cruz referring to baristas as bums essentially, as lazy people. When, first of all, they're not. I know from personal experience how incredibly difficult that job is.

But aside from that, maybe take a good hard look at yourself, Ted Cruz, a moment of self-reflection. And if you need a little assistance, we're happy to help. Let's watch. The Texas Republican and his family flew off to a Cancun resort on Wednesday as millions, millions of his constituents were without power and water. What were you thinking? Well, look, my kids, all of us this week, this has been a hell of a week for Texas. I don't like this being used as a distraction from the real issues. Do you regret going because of the firestorm or because you left when people were here struggling? Look, look, both. Many of the people who are upset with me were upset with me before we

started. You can work remotely, that was my intention. But even so, I needed to be here. So there's a massive disaster in Texas where the power grid failed during a disaster winter storm. And the first thing Ted Cruz did was try to get on a plane and leave for a vacation in Cancun. Now you tell me who the real bum is, okay? A man who works for a government, a governing body that has more recesses than grade school kids. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, look, he's a politician. He barely does anything in the first place. All he does is go around collect checks from the people that are bribing him. And then they take all of August off. They take half the year off.

They never even fricking work and he has the nerve to criticize working class people who are on their feet all day long serving jerks like him. And I'm being as polite as I could possibly be. So yeah, no thank you on your fake populism, Ted Cruz, as you attack the working man every single day in service of your owners, Robert and Rebecca Mercer, let alone all the other donors. Why don't you go ask them for what your next orders are, dog? We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we've got prominent members of the Republican Party threatening the country with riots if, you know, the DOJ dares to hold someone in a position of power accountable for their crimes. We've got that and more coming right up. Back in the Young Church, Jake, Anna, Anna, Anna go.

All right, let's get started. If there's a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle, which you presided over and did a hell of a good job, there'll be riots in the streets. There will be riots in the streets. That was Senator Lindsey Graham, essentially posing a threat to the DOJ for its investigation into Donald Trump, who we now know had literally hundreds of classified documents in his Mar-Lago residence, which he had, of course, taken home with him from the White House. Now that breaks the law. That's why he's being investigated. He was given ample opportunity to cooperate with the investigation, so the raid wouldn't even need to happen. But he doesn't comply. And so the chickens have come home to roost. And of course, after Lindsey Graham issued that threat, it was followed by Donald Trump, doing what Donald Trump does best, post on social media. And so he posts on his truth social platform to say that he is supportive of this effort to not only threaten the country, but to rile people up to the point where they might do yet another riot on behalf of Donald Trump.

Now Trump also had posted about the FBI. He's trying to instigate some infighting and a possible internal coup within the FBI. But before I get to that, Jank, I wanted to give you an opportunity to weigh in. Yeah, as usual, here we go, things are getting dangerous. So we already showed you the poll, 41% of Republicans think it might be time for violence. And so Lindsey Graham comes out here and says, well, they should do it basically. He says, you know, if you dare hold us accountable, we will have our fans resort to riots and violence and try to physically threaten you and intimidate you. Yeah, that's very normal for the right wing these days.

So be careful what you wish for, Lindsay. We all remember what your reaction was to the capital riots. So if you're going to cultivate that kind of environment where political violence and political retaliation with violence is totally acceptable and you're actually egging it on, again, be careful what you wish for. Yeah. And then of course, Donald Trump's going to jump in. And he loves talk of violence. I mean, they told him they're threatening to kill your vice president, Mike Pence. And he said he didn't have a problem with it. So you think he's going to have a problem with this? Of course, he's going to threaten more violence. And why would you threaten violence in a situation? like this because you're guilty. That's why it's super freaking obvious. And anyone else that had classified clearance would be in prison right now if they'd done what Donald Trump did. And Lizzie Graham knows that and Donald Trump knows that. Exactly. Well, I wanted to get to some of his posts in regard to the FBI because on truth social, Trump has put up several posts

where he's trying to instigate some internal infighting or possibly an internal coup with the FBI. He thinks there's a group of FBI agents who are on his side and he's trying to get them to act. So in a post, he writes, when are the great agents and others in the FBI going to say, we aren't going to take it anymore? Much as they did when James Comey read off a list of all of crooked Hillary Clinton's crimes, only to say that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute. The wonderful people at the FBI went absolutely nuts. So Comey had to backtrack and do a fake investigation in order to keep them at bay. The end result, we won in 2016 and did much better in 2020. But now the left has lost their minds.

And, you know, if you think that he might finally be weaning the country and his party off of this notion that the election was stolen from him, you'd be wrong. Because in another unhinged post, he writes, so now it comes out conclusively. that the FBI buried the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election, knowing that if they didn't, Trump would have easily won the 2020 presidential election. This is a massive fraud and election interference at a level, never seen before in our country. Remedy, declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declared the 2020 election irreparably compromised and have a new election immediately. Like, we live on different planets, but we live on different planets, but we we exist in the same country. It is a disaster situation.

Yeah. So guys, look, right wing, here we are again. You know that you can't just say, oh, the guy who lost is now magically won. There's no vehicle for that. There's no law for that. It's not in the Constitution. How would you even make that happen? Who would determine that, hey, you know what, maybe in the middle of Trump's term, we're gonna say, oh, you know what, Hillary Clinton, She's now the president. Get the hell out, Donald Trump. You know why? And no one did that? Because you can't do that. It's not a thing. Hillary Clinton cried and cried and cried. No one denies that, unless they're the establishment, right? Oh, it was the Russians, it was the weather. It was this. It was that. It was Bernie Sanders,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But she never said, no, I'm the president. I want Donald Trump to walk out and I want me to walk in. You know why? She never said that? Because that's mental. That's insane. There's no such thing. Or, you know what? I didn't like the way the election went. I thought James Comey was unfur. to me, let's redo the election. You know why she never said that? Because there is no such thing as redoing an election like this. Two years later, if you think there is, you're just wrong, you're factually wrong. It's not a matter of opinion. You've been lied to. You've been brainwashed. There is no such thing. The guy that you're following, Donald Trump, doesn't know anything. Either he's lying to you that you can redo the election now, in which he's what a monstrous

insane lie, right? Or more likely, he doesn't know himself. He's never read the Constitution. He's never looked up a law in his life. Don't only think he thinks laws are for or breaking. So you're following a moron that doesn't know anything about our government. And he was president four years? He still doesn't know because he has no intellectual curiosity. He doesn't want to know anything unless, does it help Trump? And look, he's the one that passed the law that says he should go to jail for five years. I'm going to read you a small portion of the classified document part, but this is the relevant part. If you knowingly remove such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location, that's exactly what Trump did.

And you all know that's exactly what Trump did. And now that he's cornered, he's like, let's do a random election. Put me back in church for no reason. Otherwise violence. Let's do riots. That's what the right wing has become. Pathetic, all of them. Well, I think we make the mistake in assuming that the right wing, as it exists today,

really cares about what our Constitution says, really cares about the rightful winner. of our democratic process, what's become more and more clear to me, especially with the rhetoric they've been using, things like our God given rights. Our rights were given to us by God, not by government. That was a literal statement in a Dave Rubin video that we'll show you guys later in the show. But the reason why I bring it up is because it doesn't matter, right? They don't care what the law says. They don't care what the constitution says. They don't care what the real outcome of the presidential election in 22 was, they want to have it their way, period. And our democracy is barely even secondary to what their desires are. They think they

have been anointed by God himself to run the country and throw out any democratic process that would stand in the way. That is what we're dealing with right now. So anyway, all right, well, the one One final thing I wanted to mention is he also posted this on truth social. He re-truthed someone, if that's how you refer to it, on truth social. The person wrote, the FBI interfered in the election and put the people who protested it on January 6th in prison. And he quoted that saying, wow, well said. Was it?

Nailed it. Nailed it. Anyway, we're in a scary place in this country. And the question is, with Trump being a symptom of what's broken in the U.S., what are we going to do to fix the actual root of the problem? That we have at least 30, 35% of this country that's willing to throw democracy away just to ensure that someone like Trump stays in power. That's a scary, that's a scary thought. And that's what we're dealing with today. Yeah, all right.

Last thing I'll say, because you asked the former question is, look, our only hope is for some reason, person to break into the national conversation and begin to heal things. And not necessarily heal things right away, right? You gotta fight back against the misinformation first, and you gotta win first, and then do the healing. But it's never gonna be the establishment, because the establishment will never admit to their own lies. All the politicians are wonderful, there's no money in politics, all those millions of dollars in bribes are just hugs and rainbows. So as long as you have the goddamn liars running the place, the right wing is never, ever ever going to come to their senses because they think, well, I'm not going to listen to that liar, right?

So we're at loggerheads. And national right wing media won't allow any progressives on. And national media won't allow any progressives on. So they just keep fighting over these issues. And they're both lying for their own side. All right. Well, there is a giant story involving Mark Zuckerberg, allegedly it may to something that he's not really admitting during his conversation with Joe Rogan. I'm going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll share that story with you. Hunter Biden makes an appearance. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys, but also Kurt and Andrew.

Because Andrew Ziegler and Kurt Hale just became members by hitting that beautiful join button underneath the video on YouTube. You could also go to a beautiful t-y-t.com slash join. Here's our next story, which is also beautiful. There was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Yeah, we have that too. Yeah, so you guys censored that as well? Rogan had Mark Zuckerberg on his Joe Rogan experience podcast and the topic of Hunter Biden's laptop came back up for discussion because of course it did, that's the laptop that just will not

die. And in this case, Rogan wanted to know about a New York Post story that was published pretty close to the 2020 election and it was censored on social media platforms. Now Zuckerberg is about to explain how Facebook censored that specific article and how that came to be. But we'll break it down further when we come back from the clip. So let's watch. The FBI, I think, basically came to us. Some folks on our team. It was like, hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have in on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of, of, um, uh, that's similar to that. So just be vigilant. So our protocol is different from Twitters. What Twitter did is they said,

you can't share this at all. Um, we didn't do that for the, I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being, um, being determined whether it was false. Um, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it, you could still consume it. So we say the distribution is decreased. It got shared. How does that work? It basically the ranking in news feed was a little bit less. So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise. So it definitely by what percentage? I don't know off the top of my head, but it's it's meaningful. We just kind of thought, hey look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it's a very professional law enforcement. They come to us and tell us

that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously. Did they specifically say you need to be on guard about that story? No, I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it was, it basically fit the pattern. Okay, so it's really important for you to remember that last part especially, because he's asked specifically whether the FBI had reached out in regard to the New York Post piece. First he says no, then he kind of says, I don't remember. We don't know what the truth is, but clearly the FBI had reached out because they were expecting, as he said it, a dump of Russian propaganda on social media platforms.

Okay, now with that said, was it the right thing to bury the story, right? So he's trying to show how Facebook acted differently from Twitter. Twitter didn't allow individuals to post it, whereas Facebook would allow you to post it or share it, they would just bury your post so no one can see it, effectively doing the same thing in censoring the story. That's that's how it works. But nonetheless, I think it's wrong, especially because the New York Post piece, at the time we were concerned that maybe there was inaccurate reporting in there. But it appears that there was not inaccurate reporting. And I want to tell you what that reporting was real quick. And then I'll give you the update to the reporting,

which we had done on the show. So the piece was titled, smoking gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to vice president dad. So he introduced, you know, someone who worked for Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company, to Joe Biden. And the innuendo in the piece is that, you know, Hunter Biden was given that job in order to have Burisma use his influence, his influential father for all sorts of sweetheart deals and and things like that. Now, I believe in American politics, that's called Tuesday. But nonetheless, the DOJ ended up investigating this.

And we reported on the outcome of that investigation. Let's go to that clip. According to reporting from the New York Times, in the April 2014 email, Hunter Biden indicated that Burisma's officials, quote, need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot, intervene directly with domestic policymakers and that we need to abide by the Foreign Agents Registration Act or Farah and any other U.S. laws in the strictest sense across the board. Whoa, that seems bad. Yeah, Anna, that's my point. That's my point. So let me weigh in on this

story. We now have firm conclusions. Hunter Biden and his laptop. Okay, first, let me just declare our bias in this case is approximately 0%. We don't give a damn about Hunter Biden. We don't care if he's innocent. We don't care if he's guilty. He ain't my hero. Yeah. So I thought it was important to talk about the actual content of the New York Post piece and then the update on that investigation before really commenting on whether or not

it was right for the FBI to reach out to these social media platforms to essentially censor content that would not be favorable to Joe Biden. And I think it was the wrong way to go. That's, I don't think we should have the FBI or any government agency censoring any type of content, even if it's content that we might not like and might not appreciate from certain sources, for instance. Yeah, so let's dive in. Okay, so first of all, let's know something really important here. Everyone is running with the story that Facebook buried the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Zuckerberg never said that. You just saw the tape of him saying, I don't remember. Facebook PR came out afterwards and said, yeah, just like he testified earlier, the FBI did talk to us, but not necessarily about that story. So there's absolutely no confirmation that the FBI talked to Facebook about the Hunter Biden laptop. The truth is not important, of course, you will hear the exact opposite everywhere else, okay? And you just heard it for yourself. I mean, you didn't know, you don't need us, you saw the tape, okay? Point number two, is the Hunter Biden laptop story a big deal?

Well, as we showed you in that earlier clip, and there's a lot more, and you should watch that earlier clip, you find out in the laptop that Hunter Biden tells his partner, now remember, don't represent us as having, being able to influence my dad on decisions because we can't. So the laptop for all of its salacious material, oh, the crack and the prostitutes and all the right wing says. Yeah, but in the laptop, it actually says the opposite, that we can't influence my dad and don't pretend that we can. But they just don't care, they just don't care. Look, how can you tell who's telling the truth and who's not? If the FBI came out today and said, hey, you know what? No, guys, you actually missed two or three things that are also in the laptop.

And it turns out Joe Biden did help Hunter Biden in this business dealing and it was corrupt. I'd say, okay, great. Then they have the evidence. They should prosecute Hunter Biden. And if need me, prosecute Joe Biden. I don't care. We've said it from day one. Now, when you go to the establishment media, they do care.

Don't talk about the Hunter laptop. Don't, no, you care. Holy Joe Biden's outrageous. Outrageous, the idea of it. Why is it outrageous? If he did it, hold him accountable. Why would you be against that? But they're all uniformly against that. And the right wing senses that accurately. And that makes them super pissed, right? Meanwhile, the right wing says, I don't care what's in the

laptop. Prosecute him. Okay. No, no, but Jink, let me stop you right there because this is an important point. When it comes to Hunter Biden, we don't care what the laptop says, go after him anyway, prosecute him anyway. But when it comes to their daddy, stealing classified documents, and taking it home with him to Mar-a-Lago, we're talking about hundreds of classified documents. Oh, if you prosecute him, if you prosecute him using the law that Trump himself passed when it comes to classified documents, we'll riot in the streets. Come on.

Yeah, so look, the bias of the different portions of American media is super obvious. They're not hiding it at all. To be fair, the right wing isn't hiding it. They're just lying nonstop, nonstop. They don't care. It's so brazen that they're just doing it out in the open, right? And everybody knows. But mainstream media is way more sophisticated. And they'll bury a story, they'll mangle a story, they'll reframe a story. And they'll go, whoa, whoa, what, we're objective, we're objective, right? So, and we saw the same thing happen in the primaries. We said, hey, wait a minute, Joe Biden said he wanted to cut Social Security six different times and it's on tape. And the mainstream media was like, no, you know, let's talk about that. How dare you? What do you mean, how dare I? It's on tape. Dude, you're not allowed to talk about it. You're trying to split the Democratic Party. But wait a minute, I thought you were objective.

Why do you care if I'm splitting the Democratic Party? So look, I think they're both brazen. So when you come back to the essence of the story, should the FBI warned Facebook and meta about Russian propaganda before the election in the way that they did? That's a super hard question because there was Russian propaganda. And by the way, other countries' propaganda as well, was it material? It's very hard to tell. It seems like it was more material in 2016 than it was in 2020.

But if they do do that warning, it seems to tell them that Facebook probably correctly interpreted as you better not. So that is a thing that the government should be very, very careful about. So now two different times we have the FBI screwing with elections in 2016 and in 2020. If you remember, James Comey for no goddamn reason, right before the election said, we're reopening it. investigation of Hillary Clinton and the goddamn emails over what? Anthony Wiener and a rando thing that had nothing new with anything and turned out to be a nothing burger. And that made a giant difference to help Trump win. This time around, they go around telling social media, oh, you better be careful about what you print. And I don't know if that's swung the election,

but the election was super close in those swing states. So yeah, the right wing has a right to be concerned about that. And the government should be very careful how it treads in that direction. Well, since we're on the topic of censorship on social media and Facebook, by the way, why don't we talk about where there is a clear example of a double standard in using censorship tactics? So let's discuss and we're going to compare two things here. Facebook and Instagram have apparently been telling their moderators to permit graphic posts of the Russian war on Ukraine. But apparently when it comes to Palestinians being brutalized by the Israeli government, well, that type of imagery, those types of videos are not allowed.

moderators must take those videos down, which demonstrates that there is, in fact, a double standard in applying Facebook and Instagram's terms of service. So this has become a bit of a pattern with meta, which again, owns both Facebook and Instagram. After a series of Israeli airstrikes against the Gaza Strip earlier this month, Palestinians, understandably, posted sometimes graphic videos and images of the Israeli attacks. And so this was their way of getting information out there about what they were dealing with, what they were being victimized by. And if all violent material is not allowed based on the terms of service for Facebook and Instagram, that'd be fine. But it isn't hard to find

similar imagery in regard to Russia's war on Ukraine. So Meta told moderators to make sure that graphic posts of Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian attacks were not deleted on at least seven different occasions. This is according to reporting from the intercept. In March, for instance, META even temporarily allowed users to explicitly call for the death of Russian soldiers, which is speech that normally isn't allowed on the platform. Meta's public facing community standards rulebook says, we remove content that glorifies violence or celebrates the suffering or

humiliation of others because it may create an environment that discourages participation, noting a vague exception for graphic content with some limitations to help people raise awareness about these issues. But again, if you're a Palestinian trying to raise awareness about how you're brutalized, well, it's very likely that you'll be censored on Facebook and Instagram, whereas if you are Ukrainian who's posting similar imagery to make a point about what Russians are doing to Ukrainians, that type of content will be allowed to stand. Now, let's get into those exceptions. Now during the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, for instance, between August 5th and August 15th, 7 Amle, a civil society group that formally collaborates with meta on speech

issues tallied nearly 90 deletions of content or account suspensions relating to bombings on meta platforms, noting that reports of censored content are still coming in. So I've got more details for you, Jank, but I just find it interesting that, you know, on a day when there are two Facebook censorship stories, one having to do with Hunter Biden's laptop stories and the other having to do with Israel going after Palestinians, there's no, no attention to what we're talking about right now. Everything is about Hunter's laptop. No one cares about what's happening to the Palestinians or the clear conflict, the clear double standard that meta is implementing here with their censorship. Well, good news for the right wing, because if, you know, they're constantly

talking about Facebook censorship, well, they should be livid over this. It's going to be exhibit A. I mean, why are you allowing the Ukrainians to show the same footage that you're not allowing the Palestinians to show? You got them. They're censoring the Palestinians. You got 100% right, right wing, go get them. Oh, no one in the right wing has said a word about this, nor will they ever. Quote me on it. Write it down in stone. No right winger will ever talk about this actual significant act of censorship by Facebook because it doesn't match their interests. So they'll conveniently ignore it. And by the way, so will the rest of the media. Here we go again. Right wing media and corporate media actually

agree all the time. In fact, let's go to the core issue. Should you show the dead that are in a war? Overall, I think absolutely you should, so you know the horrors of war. So I think the correct policy, Facebook has two different policies, one for Ukraine and one for seemingly everyone else, but certainly for Israel. So which one is correct? The Ukraine policy is correct. Show the pictures. So you know how terrible war is. So we have less of it. Right. But when it comes to Israel, creating those horrible pictures of dead Palestinian kids. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no. No way. You're not allowed. to show those. So this goes to my rule of thumb for you guys. Whenever they show the pictures of dead kids, you know that the government and the establishment want to start a war with that country. When they do not show the dead kids, they do not want to help that country. Okay, so when Bashar Assad did the chemical attack, we showed the dead kids. Now they were real,

the chemical attack was real, the kids, the dead kids were real. But we showed them all Over TV, bomb, Bob, you have to bomb, you have to bomb, you have to bomb, right? Yemen, there's hundreds of thousands of dead, including tens of thousands at least of dead children. Never shown a single dead child either in mainstream media or social media or right wing media, because nobody wants to help Yemen and the people bombing them or Saudi Arabia are allies, and they bomb them with what? Weapons made in the USA. So we don't show those people, pictures. So understand how media is manipulating. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of the anger and frustration people feel toward these social media platforms and just kind of broadening it to

more than meta. I think it's true of Twitter as well. Is sure, they've got their TOS. We can all read it. I mean, if we want to, it's obviously very wordy and lengthy. But nonetheless, it's never applied evenly. And so that leads to a lot of distrust toward those running the social media platforms and everyone thinks they're targeted. But in this specific case, the double standard is just very clear. There's only one instance in which this type of terrible imagery is accepted. And I agree with you. I think it's important for people to understand the severity of war. It's important for people to understand what it does to innocent human beings. So I'm okay with the imagery being shared on social media. I think there's an informative component to that. But to have that double

standard is a huge problem. And again, it so's distrust toward these private social media companies. And so I think I think there is a good case to be made about thinking of these platforms as more of a public utility or finding ways to regulate it so these double standards don't exist. I know that we're a long way from that ever happening as long as there's money in politics and these platforms are able to fund politicians. But nonetheless, it's an ongoing issue. And to be completely frank, I'm just exhausted from nonstop conversations about censorship on social media. It's exhausting and it's never ending. Every single day, there's a new story. It's the recycled story that never goes away. And just for like the sake of my mental health,

Can we just fix it already? I'm so sick of it. Yeah, they're never going to fix it because it's all about the money, okay? Everything in politics is about money. There I solved it. There's all these like weirdo conspiracy theories, people are turning frogs gay or something for inexplicable reasons. So you could be Insta hard or whatever. No, it's so just very simple. Money, money, money. It's about the money. So and there's all these weirdo racist and bigoted things like, oh, it's the Jews control everything. And that's why no, no.

Saudi Arabia rules with an iron fists here in America. So we never see the horrors of the war in Yemen. What's the common theme? Those are allies that funnel money to our politicians. Doesn't matter if you're Muslim or Jewish. Nothing matters other than the money, okay? And so you'll see, and by the way, we're against the Russian oligarch money.

We're on the side of the Ukrainians. I think we're on the right side there accidentally, okay, but we're on the right side. So you will see all the horrors of the war that Russia started in Ukraine. And you will never see the horrors of the wars we start or our allies start. That does it for our first hour. When we come back, we've got Ben Shapiro showboating. He believes that he is dangerous for the left wing. And unfortunately, the left has helped him believe that and be as delusional as he is.

So we've got that and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. You're going to get it right in the face. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.