The Young Turks - Relations In Venezuela Deteriorate And Get Ready For 2020 Election Meddling

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

Trump has just slapped fresh sanctions on Venezuela. U.S. Intelligence community confirms China and Russia will meddle in 2020 election. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Aspery and John Ida Rola, you're watching TYT, and you might be wondering, where's Jank? They're not. He's not here. They are, maybe, some people. He will be here for the post game show where we will have a debate slash discussion about Gullum. Okay? Again?

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But let's get started with the news. There are a lot of big stories to cover today, including some international news, so let's get started. The Trump administration has decided to impose sanctions on the main state-controlled oil company in Venezuela, and this is an effort to squeeze Maduro out of his role as the leader of Venezuela. Now, Trump, on his part, has determined that Maduro is not the leader of Venezuela, that his opponent is. But again, this effort to squeeze the country economically is meant to provide additional support for his opponent.

So the sanctions on Petrolios de Venezuela S.A., the South American country's main exporter, are the culmination of a two-year pressure campaign and are an attempt to funnel income from the country's biggest revenue generator into the hands of the opposition leader, Guido. Now, Steve Mnuchin gave a press briefing on this, he was in the White House, and he has some more details as to what they're going to do and how they plan for this to play out. Take a look. Peda Visa has long been a vehicle for embezzlement, for corruption, for Venezuelan officials and businessmen.

Today's designation of PEDA visa will help prevent further diversion of Venezuela's assets by Maduro and will preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela where they belong. The path to sanctions relief for PDVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the interim president or a subsequent democratically elected government who is committed to taking concrete and meaningful actions to combat corruption. So to be clear, Nicholas Maduro, the current president of Venezuela who won his reelection campaign based on a completely sham election. It was a rigged election, that's abundantly clear. He's not a good person, and we've said that on the show before. But with that said, the United States stepping in and pushing for regime change in Venezuela feels wrong, to say the least.

And luckily, at this moment, it doesn't appear that we are pushing for regime change through military action, although that is certainly on the table, and I'll give you the details to that in a second. But now we're focusing more on economic sanctions, which would hopefully, according to Trump, lead to the regime change that he wants. Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, ever since the country just reentered sort of American headlines, I've sort of felt kind of sick a little bit. And I think that people have been paying attention to American foreign policy for the past 20

years or so. They know this feeling because they know where it seems to inevitably end up. And look, it's obviously a complicated situation. Anyone who is interested in this topic, please, please do a lot of research on it, because it is complex. And the vast majority of people in American media that talk about it will have done even less research than I have. And I am not qualified to give people the real rundown of what's going on there.

Most people know even less. It's complicated, but I also know that, sort of similar to the Syrian troop withdrawal that Donald Trump came up with, like, seconds after he woke up screaming one night. Like, I don't trust these people. Like, I don't trust, even if it was exactly what I wanted, and this, of course, is not. But even if it was, I wouldn't trust them to actually manage the situation. Steve Mnuchin being involved in this, obviously, horrifying, you're going to get to Bolton, obviously. Donald Trump, the fact that he's been talking about wanting to potentially invade the country for two years.

All of this just feels like a pretext, really. Yeah, it's terrifying because there are no winners in the story as of now, because the United States is very much interested in the economic opportunities for U.S. business interests here. It's not about human rights, it's not about looking out for Venezuelans. And Venezuelans are in a horrible situation, and there is an uprising there against Nicholas Maduro for good reason. He is very much a dictator at this point.

He has very much rigged their entire political system to his advantage, and he has done all sorts of things, including paying off the military to essentially support and protect him. So he's not a good guy, but the Trump administration, in addition to U.S. business interests are not good guys. There's a lot of, there are a lot of selfish reasons for why people are actually. the way that they're acting in this story, and caught in the middle are the real hostages, and those are the people of Venezuela. The people who are desperate at this point, who do want to get rid of Maduro almost by any

means, but they're also vulnerable to, in my opinion, bad actors when it comes to business interests here in the United States. Yeah, and some of course support Maduro. I don't speak for them, nor would I ever try to. But I do know that there's an incredible amount of economic, military, and political instability there. There have been a number of deaths going back quite a while, actually. Almost any move that we make there is likely to create the grounds for more political

violence. Yes. Obviously, so the boogeyman, the worst thing that could happen is we send in thousands of troops and we occupy Venezuela, which sounds like a crazy sentence to even say. But we have Donald Trump as our leader. He has called himself the most militaristic person in the world. He has talked casually about invading that country. But even if that doesn't happen, there is no reason to believe that our getting involved,

more than we already have, won't lead to more people dying, more innocence dying. In fact, just historically speaking, the U.S. getting involved more often than not does lead to more people dying. And so for those who are skeptical of the U.S.'s involvement, I hear you, I hear you loud and clear, I'm in that same camp. At the same time, that's in no way making excuses for Maduro or trying to support him in the position that he's currently in right now. With that said, though, let's talk about potential military action against Venezuela, specifically

Maduro by the United States. Now, Trump says all sorts of things when it comes to military action. He has threatened war with North Korea, he has threatened war with Iran. It is what he does. It all really depends on how he's feeling that day and what has provoked him in any given moment. But with that said, there was a very concerning moment involving John Bolton. who is a clown for essentially showing off private notes in the middle of this press briefing.

So you saw the video featuring Steve Mnuchin. John Bolton also participated in that press briefing and talked about the same issue. And he had, let's go ahead and go to Graphics 6, he had a yellow notepad with him during this press briefing. And if you look at this photo, you will see that it says something about 5,000 troops to Colombia. What does that mean? That's Columbus. It's really bad handwriting, right? So everyone's like wondering, what does this mean? Does this mean that we are going to send troops to Colombia in order to start military intervention in Venezuela? So let me give you some details from the

Washington Post. Scrawled in tight print at the top of the cover page were two items. Afghanistan understand, welcome the talks, an apparent reference to ongoing peace negotiations with the Taliban, and 5,000 troops to Colombia. Now, the U.S. military has collaborated with its Colombian counterpart for years, providing training on everything from counterinsurgency to securing aircraft crash scenes. So there is certainly some concern that the U.S. is thinking about a military option. And when the Trump administration was asked specifically about that, they gave the answer that they usually give, which is all options are on the table.

Yeah. Also, this is sort of similar to, I think in one of the articles you gave me, actually, they referenced, you probably remember. Donald Trump had notes for a thing, at one point he wrote no collusion as a note, because he wouldn't have remembered it otherwise. He wouldn't have remembered. And it was spelled wrong, like global warming today. So those two notes that he wrote down, like, okay, maybe he would have forgotten exactly

how many troops they're considering sending to Columbia. Yeah. What was the first note for? Was he gonna get asked, like, hey, there's gonna be peace talks of Taliban, what's your position? We welcome them. Do you not know that? Yeah, it's really surprising because, look, it's one thing for Trump to slip up like that. But John Bolton has been in politics for a long time.

He is the national security advisor. He isn't some newcomer that Trump brought in. And it was such a weird rookie mistake. But he's not the only person tied to the Trump administration who made this mistake. In fact, Chris Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas and a Trump ally was photographed holding a document for a strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security. During the transition in 2016, with the text visible above his hand, the plan included hardline anti-immigration proposals such as reducing the intake of Syrian refugees to zero.

They're clowns. So one other thing too, the whole the 5,000 troops thing. Look, I believe that it was probably a slip up to reveal that. It's not impossible that he could have done it intentionally as a way of like, hey, we're threatening you without coming out about it. But, and I hope that everything I'm going to say after this point for the next few minutes is nonsense and then becomes sense again after that. It is likely that especially John Bolton has a vested interest in what happens in Venezuela. He would probably love it if we started bombing and invading them literally today. Donald Trump apparently has been interested in it.

So I think that there is some genuine interest in what happens there. There's also a sort of a generalized rhetorical thing where conservatives have been trained that when you hear Venezuela, it's like, oh, scary stuff. And so it being in the news, it all probably helps them. But in particular at a time when they're pushing for the wall, they're gonna be, the state of the union in one week is going to be all about that, they're gonna try to get it again or maybe shut down the government if not. Giving the idea that things are so bad down there that we might have to literally invade

a country, can we really detach that 100% from their argument that we need a wall at our southern border? Like that that doesn't try to sort of buttress their general point, that things are scary, we need a wall? I mean, yes, definitely. Especially what I doubt many of his followers could even tell you which countries the migrants are coming from. They probably think they're mostly coming from Venezuela.

Yeah, that's actually an interesting point that I haven't heard anywhere else. It's probably nonsense. I don't know if they're connecting the dots in the way that you just outlined. I think that for their political strategy and their own purposes, it would be smart to do it. I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying in terms of political strategy, it would work with Trump's base. That type of fear mongering has been perfect for Trump and his administration. It works really well with his base.

But I don't know if that's what their intention is. What I do know is that there are certainly business interests here in the United States who look at Venezuela as an opportunity. And the political uprising that's happening in Venezuela right now is being exploited by these business interests. That's really what's happening behind the scenes when it comes to our U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela. Yeah.

All right, moving on to some other international news. Every year, we have a national security assessment, and we have a better idea of what type of adversaries there are out there, what type of bad actors are targeting us, and what they plan on doing. Now, the latest intelligence assessment touches on a number of different issues, including meddling in the upcoming 2020 election, North Korea's objectives when it comes to denuclearization, and also what Iran is doing and could potentially plan. to do in the future when it comes to its own uranium enrichment.

For the purposes of this conversation, we're going to focus on meddling in the election, and we're going to talk about North Korea. Now, Dan Coates, who's the Director of National Intelligence, gave a summary of what their findings were for this year. Take a look. We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities, and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities. because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.

And while we do not believe Iran is currently undertaking activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device, Iranian officials have publicly threatened to push the boundaries of Zikpoha restrictions if Iran does not gain the tangible financial benefits it expected from the deal. So two really important things that he mentioned there. The fact that North Korea has really no incentive to denuclearize, they see their nuclear weapons development is incredibly important to keeping themselves safe, you know, keeping them or using those weapons as a deterrent from U.S. military intervention, what have you. And then the second part of it is Iran.

So even though Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, it appears that Iran is still following the terms of that deal. Remember, the United States imposed sanctions on Iran again. And so if they're being squeezed economically, what incentive do they have to keep following the terms of that deal? Now, there are other countries involved and other countries are still supporting Iran because they're still doing the right thing and following that nuclear deal. But who's to say they'll continue doing it?

And that's what Dan Coates is trying to say here. Yeah, I guess the hope is that although we are, you know, we were one of the principal negotiators, one of the principal partners, the idea is, I guess, that. that maybe the status quo can continue for at least a few years, that little bit of speech that you heard there certainly sounds like an argument for why we should not have pulled out of this very carefully negotiated agreement over the course of a couple of years. I hope that they don't choose to. I mean, it's not to say that they're not engaged in a number of different foreign military

adventures that threaten their security, so they certainly seem to be willing to take risks like that. This would be another thing like that. North Korea, I think everything he said there makes some sense and is largely what I think we would expect. I do disagree that they see no, not that they don't see any incentive to denuclearize, but that I think that they should see quite a bit. Like if they were to demilitarize, denuclearize, democratize, join the international community

of countries, there would be any number of different advantages, not just, I should say, For the people of North Korea, obviously that would be significant, but for the leadership as well, because they live far better than the average North Korean, but they still live in a horrible circumstances compared to how they could. I'm sure that they have a great deal of fear of what could happen, that they could get locked up or whatever. Is that what America does? Do we really pursue people for the crimes that they've committed in terms of war

and genocide and all of that? Very rarely it seems like. I know, John, but you think Kim Jong-un would want to democratize? I mean, he's been vicious to the people of North Korea. you democratize, and they're common for you. But I'm not making that argument idealistically. I'm making it pragmatically. I think that his situation could actually become far better.

He'll have billions of dollars at that point. He'll be an actual billionaire. I think that he would be doing quite well. But I will say, do you remember when Trump initially started these talks? I do, yes. And he had these very high hopes. He was very bombastic and what he said was going to happen. I mean, he said that we have nothing to worry about.

North Korea has denuclearized, that's what he said on Twitter. He should tell Dan Coates. Yeah. And at the time, we were skeptical of that and we were attacked. Oh yeah, I know. So much. I know. How dare you say that you don't believe Donald Trump when he says that he's going to work

with this dictator and everything's gonna be okay. I hope that it does and I think that we should continue diplomacy with them. But the idea that like just, you know, false hopes were gonna make it so last year is insane. And that's why we said what we said. Yeah, I mean, look, getting attacked is, of course we're gonna get attacked. I don't really care too much about that. But I do think it's important to follow up on these types of stories and see how they develop. And so far, there's no reason to believe that North Korea has denuclearized.

In fact, Trump had that one meeting with Kim Jong-un. He's actually planning the second one-on-one meeting. I don't know if it's going to be one-on-one to be fair, but he's going to have a second meeting with Kim Jong-un in about a month, assuming that everything goes smoothly from now to then. Who knows? One of the thing, too, on this area, and perhaps only this area, I don't even blame Trump. That's an incredibly difficult situation. One of the most difficult to navigate diplomatic and military situations in the world, I would imagine.

If he came into office, four years went by, and literally no progress had been made, I would not have counted that on the top 50 list of the faults of his presidency. But he's making us have to judge him because of his bravado and arrogance. No, you're absolutely right. And it's not about, hey, Trump is the person who can get North Korea to do this, and if he doesn't succeed, then we're gonna blame him. No, he's the one who escalated tensions with North Korea and engaged in this childish, juvenile exchange on Twitter, calling him little rocket man and talking about how big his button

is. I mean, that was what escalated tensions. And then he luckily was convinced that, hey, maybe I should try this whole diplomacy thing. We gave him credit for that, we wanted that. But then he took things way too far. He went from calling him little rocket man to then saying that Kim Jong-un is like this fantastic guy. He went on like a international tour talking about how great Kim Jong-un is, how they had great

chemistry. So can I make a really stupid analogy? Absolutely. This is really dumb. So he brought up the possibility, we're gonna make things right with North Korea. He met with them and he became fast friends with the dictator, so much so that he received Received letters praising him and Republicans were so like, oh my God, diplomacy from Donald Trump, it's amazing.

And it reminded me of people who want to get in shape or lose weight. And people who study motivations say, don't go telling people that you're going to do that, or that you are doing that because you can get praise. Like, hey, that's a great idea. You should be doing that. You do look a little bit healthier. Yeah. Because the problem is that your incentive to follow through goes away if you're already getting

something for the little bit of effort that you've put in. And I feel like to some extent he's done that with this diplomatic situation. He feels like everything's resolved. We're best friends, even though they haven't denuclearized. They're no more economically open than they were last year. The situation is incredibly tense with South Korea. I feel like he already got all the praise he wanted and praise is all that he wants. Well, you know what, you bring up a super fascinating point because for people like us,

and I think for most Americans who pay attention to politics in a somewhat objective way, Of course, we all have our political leanings, you see what's really going down with North Korea and you see the fact that they haven't actually denuclearized and you don't see this as a win for Trump. You're just relieved that things haven't escalated to the point where we're engaged in some sort of military action. But when it comes to his supporters and when it comes to his base, and I know this based on recent conversations I've had, they do see Trump as someone who's succeeded in this whole

diplomatic approach toward North Korea. that I was speaking to just yesterday was trying to make the case that no, Trump is probably one of the best presidents in U.S. history. And I was like, okay, list the things that you feel Trump did right. And he specifically mentioned the fact that, hey, South Korea, North Korea are talking again. And it's all because of Trump. Now mind you, they started talking again because of fear that there was going to be an all-out war.

Yeah, but he created that fear, so shouldn't he get the credit? It's just incredible. So yes, for Trump's base, he has one. And maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing. But to be fair to me, I feel like when it comes to Trump's base, he can do no wrong. Even when he punches them in the face and raises their taxes while giving the wealthy huge tax cuts, they'll be like, yeah, yeah, we're winning.

Anyway. So let's move on to the second part of this intelligence report, because I think that it's far more are more important to do something about this, especially with this election coming up. Now, the recent intelligence assessment found that there are certain countries who are very much interested in meddling in our upcoming 2020 election. Now, Dan Coates, who is the director of national intelligence, outlined all the ways in which we need to keep an eye on these bad actors and mitigate some of the negative impact that they could have on our election.

So here's what he had to say. We assess that foreign actors will review the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests. Russia's social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians. Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack and leak operations or manipulating data in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions, and elections.

None of this is surprising to me. And it's not solely based on Russia. There's fear that China is also very much trying to manipulate the American people and metal in our 2020 elections. And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Now Starbucks is doing it too. We'll talk about that later. But no, I think that this is something that we can actually get ahead of.

I don't know if we will, but a recent story that comes to mind is the Covington Catholic protest and how that led to all sorts of debate and anger in the country. There was the initial video, which was taken out of context. One of the, I mean, I know, let's not, let's not, let's not, let's not, I don't want to adjudicate that again. Wait, was that kid Russian? No, no, but the one of the accounts, actually the main account that tweeted the out of context video seemed like a really shady, it didn't seem like a real account.

So it's being investigated right now by the House Intelligence Committee. Twitter actually suspended the account. Really? It's being investigated? It is being investigated. So the account used a photo of a Brazilian model, but the account also indicated that she was allegedly a school teacher in California. And also the activity, like 130 plus tweets a day, the number of people the account was following.

There were a bunch of red flags. We don't know for sure yet if there was, I don't know, some Russian hacker behind it or whatever. But I'm bringing that up because that was the perfect story to kind of divide Americans. It did exactly that. And it was tweeted by what appears to be a shady Twitter account. And so we keep falling for the same nonsense and we need to be better. I'm just unsure what the solutions are. Yeah, no, I don't know what they are.

I mean, look, I would be satisfied at least to have people in charge that recognize it as an actual threat and we'll do something about it. And hopefully if it's included in this sort of intelligence assessment, they will do what is necessary. I don't know outside of national security. Like when it comes to Facebook and Twitter and all of that, I don't think that they generally care to do anything, nor if they did, would they be capable of doing much of anything? But I do look forward to, because for some reason, this is sort of a controversial thing to even talk about, I don't know why, but I look forward to in the near future, everyone agreeing it's a problem.

Because inevitably in four or five or six months time, these attacks are going to be against Bernie Sanders. They're going to be against any progressive running in the Democratic primary. It is going to be attempting to divide people within the party, within the Democratic primary, and then if we get a strong progressive as the candidate, is going to be attempting to destroy them before the general election. And so even the people that think that we should not be speaking about this now are going to have to take it seriously, inevitably, because these sorts of attacks are going to be designed

to destroy Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or whoever it is. Yeah, you're exactly right. I think that as members of the media, what we can do, what we can do better moving forward, is just be more skeptical of those viral stories involving race, involving, you know, some of those hot button topics in the country, because that's exactly where these bad actors go when they want to further, they exploit those divisions to further divide us. And so we need to be hyper aware of that. And when we come across these viral videos, and I'm saying this for myself, just as much

as anyone else, just be a little more skeptical. Try to find the original source, obviously, and try to figure out where it comes from, what the full context is. Don't just immediately resort to, I gotta be first in talking about this on a show. No, it doesn't matter if you're first. I know that you're gonna get more clicks, I know you're gonna probably get higher ratings, but you're probably gonna be super embarrassed when it turns out that that video was taken out of context by a bad actor.

What if you have no shame? Well, if you have no shame, we have plenty of those people in America. And I will also say, I don't think this has happened yet, but it's possible that this primary or the general election will be the first instance where a story like that will go viral, some video like that, and it will be artificial, that it'll be a deep fake or whatever. We haven't really had that where a really inflammatory thing is attributed to a person, it turns out that they didn't actually say it. If we can even prove that it wasn't authentic in the first place.

But that is coming. I don't know if it's in the primary, I know if it's in the general election, or if it's in 2024 or whatever, but get ready for that. Yeah, and I don't know if the intelligence community was referring to things like the deep fakes when they made this statement, but I think that this is an important thing to share with all of you. The same assessment says that intelligence analysts expect American adversaries to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other's experiences, suggesting

the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections. Maybe. So you bring up a really good point. They are getting a lot more sophisticated in misleading the public. And so not everything you read is true, we all know that. And it's something that I want to keep in mind anytime I come across a hot button topic or something that's recently gone viral. Yeah.

All right, we gotta take our break. When we come back, we are going to do a deep dive into some of the candidates that are running in 2020, including Kamala Harris, possibly Mr. Schultz. from Starbucks, that story is not good, not good at all. Anyway, stick around. We'll give you the details. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-I-N-F-T-R. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations

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on the news. Oh, John. I want to talk about your diet habits. Oh, God. But we'll do that later. Okay, let's move on to the news. Starbucks Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is flirting with the idea of running in the 2020 election. However, if he were to run, he would run as an independent.

We found out about this on 60 minutes just last Sunday, where he said, quote, I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent, oh, sounds so appealing, outside of the two-party system. We're living at a most fragile time, not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently, consistently not doing what's necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged every single day in revenge politics. Now, I love that he used the phrase revenge politics because the idea of him running as an

independent is literally revenge against what he deems leftists in the Democratic Party. So he's very much concerned about the Alexander. Akasio-Cortez brand of progressives that we're seeing the Democratic Party now. And so he's concerned that, hey, Democrats are moving way too far to the left. They're really starting to threaten my taxes, okay? I don't want to have to pay more in taxes, you know, I'm a billionaire. So maybe I should run as an independent and maybe I'll have a shot. That's dumb.

Yeah. So he's so scared that AOC is going to drive the party wild, that they're going to nominate a crazy leftist. So even though he's a lifelong Democrat, he's gonna run as an independent. So rather than just run as a Democrat and beat these crazy people you're so scared of, you're not even gonna try. That is a power move to launch your campaign on. Well, let me give you some of the statements he made in regard to that wing of the Democratic

Party. He says, I respect the Democratic Party. I no longer feel affiliated because I don't know their views represent the majority of Americans. I don't think we want a 70% income tax in America. Now the phrasing there was on purpose. No one is going to get their entire income taxed at 70%. What he was referring to was a tax increase for the top marginal tax rate. So anyone making over $10 million a year would be taxed at a higher rate.

So did I say $10,000, $10 million? So if you're making $10 million a year, any dollar after that would be taxed at $70. Yeah. Well, hypothetically, it's not even an actual proposal. Right. It was a conversation starter on the news. Exactly. But it terrifies someone like Howard Schultz.

So now he considers himself a centrist independent. Well, he's being honest about why he's running. I mean, the guy has been, he's been running now for like 72 hours. He refuses to be specific at all about anything that he stands for, anything he would do, except that he does not want taxes raised on the ultra wealthy. So he's being honest about that. He's being honest, but what I find fascinating about his presentation of all of this is that he really thinks that he understands the pulse of the people, right?

That most Americans are not in favor of increasing the top marginal tax rate, but he's wrong. In fact, a recent Harris Hill poll found that registered voters actually do overwhelmingly support increasing taxes. 59% supported AOC's proposal, a Fox News poll published last week found that 70% of registered voters backed hiking taxes for families making more than $10 million a year. A Fox News poll. It's a Fox News poll. And so, by the way, that's something to keep in mind every time you hear Tucker Carlson, you

know, spread a populist message when it comes to tax increases for the wealthy. He's been doing that a lot lately. It's LPS. Well, whether he's genuine, I think is questionable, to say the least. I don't think he's being genuine. I think that he's pandering to his audience, because whether you're a Democrat or Republican, we all know what's going on with our economy. We all know that there is corporate welfare going on.

We know that the middle class and the working class pays a higher percentage in taxes than the super wealthy do, and that's an injustice. That has nothing to do with political affiliation. That is a, it's class warfare, basically. And people realize that. And so maybe the social issues we disagree on, but when it comes to the way our economy is run right now, I think most people know that there is economic injustice happening. But with that said, I wanna give you an example of someone who recognizes what Howard

Schultz is all about, who is very much concerned about economic injustice, and called him out during a recent stop at Schultz's book tour. Take a look. I am seriously considering running for president as a centrist, independent. And I wanted to clarify the word independent, which I view merely as a designation on the ballot. Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire. Go back to getting Raycheon on Twitter. Go back to Damos with the other billionaire elite who think they know how to run the world.

That's not what you want for TV. Fun. Now, we know that the majority of Americans are actually in favor of Medicare for All. In fact, about 70% of Americans are in favor of a universal health care program like Medicare for All. And Howard Schultz has spoken against it. And the heckler wanted to call him out on that as well. So let's take a look at the next video.

So healthcare is a human right. So I... Health care is a human rights! Health care is a human rights! In any event... Health care is a human rights! Let me ask you a question. Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to ask, I'm going to... Sir, I'm actually going to get to your question. I'm going to ask it like this. Starbucks is a global company operating in many countries that have universal health care. Yes. Why does he believe that a similar health care system is unworkable here? Okay, good good.

What I do believe, and this is vitally important, is I believe that every American has the right to affordable health care. But there are other ways to get at this in which private enterprise, my company, which is a scalable opportunity, my company provides free health insurance for our employees. That's weird, that was not an answer to the question that you were opposed with. It wasn't. I mean, he's trying to make an argument that, hey, Starbucks offered healthcare. I mean, Starbucks under the Affordable Care Act, was forced to offer health care to its employees. But more importantly, healthcare should not be tied to your job. It just shouldn't be.

If you care about advancements in small businesses, for instance, people are much more likely to leave their job and take that risk of starting a small business. if they weren't as fearful about losing their health insurance. A lot of people feel stuck in their jobs. They might be miserable with their jobs. But if they have health insurance and that very important benefit through their work, they're much less likely to take a risk and leave. And so the fact that he brought up that, oh, Starbucks offered health insurance, no, but that's

not really a solution to a problem that we've all been dealing with. Yeah, yeah, and really, he's been, like I was looking back at articles, going back literally a couple of years talking about him assembling a PR team and oh, he looks like he's thinking about it and everything. He's been thinking about it for a couple of years. And on the single largest topic that will be discussed in this election, he can't even answer, why is it that countries that are less economically well-off as us can do this, but we can't. Well, what I do believe, that's not, you're not gonna be president.

Howard Shultz, I hope that you're watching this. You're not gonna be president, you're wasting your time, you're wasting my time, you're wasting his time. Edwin, he looks okay, he's got his phone, but you're still wasting his time. You're wasting our rundown time and making us talk about you. You and Bloomberg, both of which have come out against single-payer healthcare in this election, are just egotistical, arrogant billionaires. That's all you are that think that you can just waltz in here now.

Who was asking for Howard Schultz to run for president? Maybe one of Obama's aides. I know we're gonna talk about that. Yeah, Steve Schmidt. Was there anyone else in the entire country? It was like, you know what? In my top 100 people, I would put Howard Schultz. No one was doing that.

He has no constituency. The entire thing has been a ridiculous sham from beginning to end. He's getting constantly dunked on at his book tour and on Twitter. And I'm glad. I don't like people yelling at events like that generally. But I do think that we need to make him realize how horrible of an idea this is. And that if he wants to maintain any sort of reputation in America, he needs to pull out immediately. So on Twitter, I want to see every one of his tweets get ratioed.

I want him thrown into memes. I want all that stuff. I want him to be horrified at the prospect of running for president, because it is a gigantic diversion from an actual conversation about the real issues that we can't afford to have, as Democrats, as Americans, as people sitting at this desk. You know, John Adirola might wear a tie on this show, but don't expect him to be buttoned up in his delivery. That was excellent.

I really enjoyed that. That was good. That sounded like you were mocking me. No, I wasn't mocking you. Like, you're coming here like I am. Thank you. No, but I love when you get passionate like that because you're absolutely right. But part of me feels like, and this is me speculating that he's not serious about a run.

I think that he's just trying to promote his book, which is why I purposely didn't mention the title of his book. But I don't know, that's me speculating. Maybe he is serious. But what I do know is that if he were serious, then he would have a better sense of what Americans are concerned about. Either he's so unbelievably disconnected from the average American, which isn't a far-fetched, I think you're out of something.

Because he's literally worth, you know, I believe it's a little over $3 billion. That's his worth. But I also think that there's a possibility that, hey, but here's the thing, even if you're super rich and you're not plagued with the same economic problems that average Americans are plagued with, you read the news, right? You see what people are frustrated and angry about, right? You saw the rise of a no-name politician Bernie Sanders and how. he kind of took the world by storm or the country by storm in the 2016 election.

I mean, he had no name recognition and the fact that he touched on these economic issues that you claim go way too far to the left should tell you something. Like, it should tell you that, hey, these are policies that people care about. It touches on issues that people are worried and concerned about. But no, he comes at it with, no, no, no, no Medicare for all. I want to preserve my tax cuts. I mean, he's just so disconnected from reality right now. And what chance do you have if you won't answer hypotheticals about what you're gonna run

on? If the only policy you have is not raising taxes, what chance do you actually have to win? When your book, I'm not gonna say the title of the book, but the subtitle is a journey to reimagine the promise of America. That has been focused tested until it's broken down to its subatomic particles. There's nothing there, there's no meaning, there's nothing. a quest to bring together the morals of a nation. Like, we could make up these book titles.

They mean nothing, they say nothing. You could take him, and then, like, honestly, if at the next stop of his book tour, you just put a different billionaire up there, would anyone know? No. Who would know and who would care? Good points. And one really fast, super last point, he was on the view today. Yeah, of course.

Because he's a billionaire who decided to run. Was Richard Ojetta on the view? No, of course not. Tulsi Gabbard announced, did she go on the view? No. Even Kamala Harris, I don't think, has been on the view yet since she announced. But instantly, the billionaire gets on. If Kamala Harris hasn't been on the view, she will be on the view.

She will, yes. I mean, she just had a town hall last night, which we covered for our members, join, t.yt.com slash join. But you make a really great point about the politicians who have no name recognition, but they might have great ideas. They get shut out of the media. Whereas Howard Schultz, who you're right, has no chance, especially running as an independent, he gets the media attention immediately. And I know that we're talking about it. But the reason why I'm bringing it up is because it goes to show you that there are people

who have identified as Democrats their entire lives. That's what he identified as, who are now turning their backs on the Democratic Party because they want to preserve their tax cuts. They want to preserve deregulation. and they do not want Medicare for all, right? So there are certainly many people who are on the right, lean right within that spectrum of Democrats. And he happens to be one of them. And he thinks that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez serves as a threat to the Democratic Party,

as opposed to someone who's pushing the party to, in my opinion, a better direction. We got to take a break. When we come back, we are going to talk about. Kamala Harris and her record of prosecuting parents whose children were truant from school. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Welcome back to T-Y-T, Anna Kasparian and John Ida-Roll. with you, a few member comments, thank you for writing in.

Nels writes in and says, I've given a higher percentage of money to charity and I'm a broke college student. So Nels, I'm not sure if you're specifically referring to a TYT Investigates story that was published today, but TYT investigates are reporters, Jonathan Larson and Ken Clippenstein, looked into the charitable donations that Howard Schultz had made, and it turns out that he has donated less than 1% of his wealth. If he was serious by being president, imagine two years ago when he already knew he wanted to run, imagine what he could have done between then and now with all that money.

A lot. He's not serious. So he's super wealthy and 1% is a lot. So I'm not, look, I know that percentage wise, that doesn't look good. And when you're super wealthy, you can afford more, like you can afford to donate a higher percentage of your income to either taxes or charity, yada, yada. Yeah, I give them no credit. I agree, yeah, let's move on.

Oh yeah, one more message coming from Melissa Craig. I always watch two IT while making dinner. In the middle of the polar vortex in Michigan feels like negative 20 outside. Doesn't feel like negative 20, probably is negative 20. By the way, watching that video, I know that if I were to go through his book, I would find a bunch of stuff to shred him on. Who wants to read that book? Not me.

I think he's got a good job shredding him on the show already. Yeah, but I like doing it with book quotes. You can shred him again on damage report tomorrow morning. Okay, perhaps I will. Yeah. All right, let's move on to Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris's prosecutorial record has been coming up over and over again since she announced that she intends to run as president in 2020.

Now a number of issues have come up and they do concern progressives, but for the purposes of this discussion, I want to bring up what she did in terms of truancy laws in the state of California. Now, she wanted to encourage parents to send their kids to school. And she did it using a stick, and she actually bragged about it rather than using carrots. And so this video is making its rounds online, and I wanted to share it with you, and you get a sense of where her mind was at when she pushed for these truancy laws, which in essence would prosecute parents whose children were habitually truant.

Take a look. I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime. So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy. Well, this was a little controversial in San Francisco. And frankly, my staff went bananas. They were very concerned because we didn't know at the time whether I was going to have an opponent in my reelection race. But I said, look, I'm done.

This is a serious issue, and I've got a little political capital, and I'm going to spend some of it. And this is what we did. We recognized that in that initiative, as a prosecutor and law enforcement, I have a huge stick. The school district has got to care it. Let's work in tandem around our collective objective and goal, which is to get those kids in school. And one of the ways that she would try to persuade parents to send their kids to school is through threatening to send them to jail if they didn't do so. And not just threatening.

And there were people who did pay the consequences for this. Now look, everyone agrees, we want parents to send their kids to school. That's incredibly important. But who do you think these types of laws negatively impact the most? Wealthy. Definitely not the wealthy. It's the poor, it's minorities, vulnerable communities, right? And when you factor in things like income inequality and how the economic system has been rigged

against the middle class and the working class in America, you kind of get an understanding, a better understanding as to why some families have a difficult time ensuring that their kids go to school every day. So, prosecuting them and using tough on crime, you know, policies, I would argue isn't the best way to go about it and certainly isn't the progressive route. But Kamala Harris has defended her actions here and I will give her, I will give you what she said in one of her books about this particular policy, but first, John, jump in, I want to get your thoughts.

Yeah, like I think there will be people who will find that strategy, if not the outcome, the strategy appealing. I think they're far more likely to be Republicans or conservatives, I would imagine. But I think some people will think, yeah, you've got to be a little bit tough, but you could have done it in a way that you make sure that no parent goes to jail for six months or something like that, that you make sure that you are not distributing this punishment in a fundamentally unequal and non-representative fashion. You could do that if your goal was to accomplish your stated goal, making sure the kids get

education while also, you know, pursuing progressive values. But on top of the obvious, the way that you pursued it doesn't, I would say doesn't support the sort of Miaculpa that comes after, the way that she delivered that message, I'm imagining that was not intended to get out. That's the sort of speech where the laugh and all of that, like, it was almost, yeah. This isn't a joke? Yeah, the delivery. And look, who knows if this is what she was actually genuinely feeling?

But the way, the optics are not good. It makes it seem as though she was almost giddy at the thought of prosecuting parents whose kids were habitually truant. Now again, it is incredibly important to make sure that kids go to school. I'm not, I think she makes a good point there, but it's all about, you know, which solutions are the most effective. Now, there are real consequences, I mean, further consequences to prosecuting these parents. It pushes them in this vicious cycle of poverty, because now you're dealing with the court system.

Now you're dealing with a lawyer. You're dealing with a huge fine. And if you're already poor, what do you think that's going to do? Do you think your kids are going to be in a better situation? Do you think those kids are going to be in a better situation if their parents are now having to deal with you prosecuting them? And there were parents prosecuted. With that said, though, let's look at the second part of the video. And then I'm going to give you specific examples of how this really played out in the state of California.

Take a look. on my letterhead. Now, let me tell you something about my letterhead. When you're the DA of a major city in this country, usually the job comes with a badge. And there is often an artistic rendering of said badge on your stationery. So I sent a letter out on my letterhead

to every parent in the school district, outlining the connection that was statistically proven between elementary school truancy, high school dropouts, who will become a very very, victim of crime and who will become a perpetrator of crime. We sent it out to everyone. A friend of mine actually called me and he said, Kamla, my wife got the letter. She freaked out. She brought

all the kids into the living room, held up the letter, said, if you don't go to school, Kamla's going to put you and me in jail. Yes, we achieved intended effect. That, so the inclination is to say that could have been delivered better, but I think that any other way you could have delivered that would have been better. I mean, that sounds, I'm not trying to say that they're the same sorts of policies, the effect on children was just as bad, but like, Stephen Miller wants to scare migrants from coming into America, so he says, hey, we separate the kids, they won't want to come, they'll be too scared.

I don't like using fear to control people's behavior. Yeah, it's fear mongering. It's not the same thing, obviously, but I don't, I just don't like the, the The philosophical construct that underlies this sort of idea. Yeah, it's your, look, it's fear mongering. It's using fear as a tactic to convince or persuade people to do things. And I would argue that it's much more effective to see what, look, she's a prosecutor. Like we forget.

And Edwin, our stage manager, made a really great point off air. Actually it was JR, sorry, I take the credit back from Edwin. My bad. J.R. made a great point about how, look, we all exist in our own bubbles, right? And we have to be hyper aware of that and make sure that we get other perspectives so we don't get stuck in the same way of thinking. But she was a prosecutor. And think about the way prosecutors think.

Think about the environment in which prosecutors thrive in their careers. So having a prosecutor approach this serious problem from a prosecutor's perspective, of course you're gonna get criminalization. Of course you're gonna get this tough on crime perspective. But I would argue that it's much more important to think about the systemic issues surrounding truancy, right? The economic issues surrounding truancy. And maybe think about the type of resources we can offer to low income families so it's easier

for them to ensure that their kids are in school. But when you come at it from this demonization perspective, like let's demonize these parents, let's prosecute these parents, again, you push them in this vicious cycle of poverty. You make the situation worse, not only for the parents, but also for the children. Now, according to Jezebel, they did actually a great job in kind of summarizing the impact of these policies. They write, after her victory in 2010, she had pushed the state to pass and implement one of the harshest anti-truancy laws in the nation, one that would penalize parents of students

who were chronically absent from school with up to a year in potential jail time or a fine of up to $2,500. Look, people with solid middle class jobs would be incredibly hard pressed, stressed out to pay that fine. Imagine if you're living in poverty, you have children, you're really struggling, and you get a fine like that, or you get sent to jail for a year. How is that making the, how are the kids better off? You think the kids are going to spend more time in school if that happens?

Yeah, and you could set up that system saying we're gonna scare the hell out of people, Yeah. But the guidelines internally, and I have documentation from the time, showed we were never going to lock up the parents. That's crazy, why would we do that? We're not going to charge them $2,500. You could do that. It doesn't seem like that's what happened.

That is not what happened. In 2009, her office stated it had brought charges against 20 parents on truancy related cases. In 2012, as a result of the statewide law that passed with Harris' backing, one woman, Lorraine Quevas was sentenced to 180 days in jail after her two young children missed more than 100 days of school. So there were people who were indeed prosecuted, and I just, I fail to understand how this actually helped the students or help these kids. This is not progressive.

So if you are a progressive who's very much concerned about picking the right Democratic candidate to represent your best interests. This is something that I really think that Harris needs to clear up. But she has remained defined on this. She has defended these policies time and time again. In fact, in one of her books she wrote, even today, others don't appreciate the intention behind my approach. They assumed that my motivation was to lock up parents when, of course, that was never

the goal. Our effort was designed to connect parents to resources that could help them get their kids back into school where they belonged. We were trying to support parents, not punish them. them and in the vast majority of cases we succeeded, except the whole notion of the policy was to punish them. You talked about the stick, using this as a stick rather than using it as carrots. And so you can't do one thing and then say you did the other.

Like we're able to dissect your policies and determine whether or not it was a positive one, whether or not it was a progressive one, and whether or not it was effective in your initial intentions. I think her initial intentions were good, but the outcome in policy was not. Yeah, yeah, and saying, well, in the vast majority cases, we didn't do something terrible. Yeah, but what about when you did? Yeah. Anyway, that's not gonna go away. It's not.

So we will probably revisit this in the future, but wanted to give you guys all the information. John, thank you so much for doing hour one with me. Thank you for having you on. It was fun. Where can people watch the damage report? Preferably at facebook.com slash the damage report, TYT. You can't watch the full show or anything, but if you remember, you You can get it streaming live and on YouTube TV, and you can go to YouTube.com slash the damage

report to get the clips every day, including clips from earlier today's episode. Awesome. Brett Ehrlich will join in for hour two, so stick around. We have a lot to get to, including establishment Democrats threatening to primary aOC, because they're so bitter. I love that story. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen

ad-free, access members, only bonus content. and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple.co slash TYT. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.