The Young Turks - Rep. Steve King Stripped Of Power And What Took Republicans So Long To Hold Him Accountable?

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

Rep. Steve King is finally facing congressional backlash for his history of racist comments. Republicans are taking action against the congressmen with many calling for his resignation. 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

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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome to the Young Turks. Jake Euguranica is sparing with you guys.

Lots of news to get to. any part of the show, tyt.com slash join to become a member. Don't miss a minute of it or are dozens of shows. Go. What do you got, Anna? All right. Representative Steve King from Iowa has a long history of saying things that most people who can think for themselves would deem racist. And we're going to show you examples of that in just a minute. But during a recent interview with the New York Times, King couldn't understand why white nationalist was something offensive. In fact, he was quoted as saying in this time's piece, white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive?

And then he said, why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization? Now, following that statement, a number of Republican lawmakers have been calling on Representative King to resign, and it appears that they have now decided to strip him of any committee power within the House of Representatives. So all the committees that he was on, he will no longer serve on. King had been a member of the House Judiciary, Agriculture, and Small Business Committees. He had also served as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in the last Congress.

So I want to focus on that for a second. The Republicans had seen all the other racist things that Steve King had said in the past. And they still had him, not just on the Judiciary Committee, But as the chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution and civil justice, they put this guy as the chairman of the subcommittee on civil justice. I mean, that is basically spitting in minority's faces. They already know all the other things that he said. Look, Steve King actually made an interesting defense of this last outrageous comment by saying, hey, look, the New York Times got me out of context in that I was saying, hey, white national

and white supremacy is one thing, well, that's not what he said, but I was referring to Western civilization, and how did that become a bad word? Because we're taught in class, in classes about how great our civilization is. And that's an interesting point, and that's why sometimes progressives say, no, we should teach more accurate history. Doesn't mean that America is bad and the West is bad. It means sometimes we've done great things, sometimes we've done terrible things. And so, but Steve King doesn't want you to know that. So he's saying, look, I was just referring to Western civilization because we don't teach out white nationalism and white supremacy is good in classes.

Okay, that'd be an interesting offense if it was not for the rest of the context that we're about to show you. Steve King has made one racist comment after another, and this time he got his hand caught in the cookie jar. So I think what the Republicans get upset at people like Steve King for is not for being racist, but for exposing the rest of them, for agreeing to all those policies anyway, but just not the racist words. That's why they're so annoyed with Steve King.

We were doing all these wonderfully discriminatory policies in the first place, and now Steve you're going to go expose it by actually naming it. And he can't help himself. I think that following Trump's election, he has felt emboldened to be a lot more open about his white supremacy. And so we're gonna give you all the examples that we've seen throughout the years that prove who Representative King really is. And let's start off with this infamous video of King talking about the dreamers and what their

calves are like. Take a look. Parents brought them in. It wasn't their fault. It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They weren't all brought in by their parents. For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another hundred out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves of the sides of cantaloupes because they're all in 75 pounds

of marijuana across the desert. So he characterizes most of the dreamers as individuals who are trying to smuggle drugs across the border in their cabs because they have calves the size of cantalopes. I mean, look, do I have to bother telling you guys that there's no factual basis for immigrants having cantaloupe cabs and that the only person who would make that up? Remember, the dreamers were kids, are kids who are brought in by their parents. There's no evidence that any dreamer was brought in by their parents dragging 75 pounds of marijuana in.

He made that up, why? Because it's demagoguery. So you should hate the immigrants. Even their little kids, you should hate them too because they have cantaloupe cabs. This is not subtle. Yeah, yeah, we're just getting warmed up, as Jank would say. So the next video is from 2016 during the elections, and here's what he has to say about whites versus everyone else.

I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization? And white people? Then Western civilization itself that's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America, Western civilization. I mean, that's the thing that he does often.

He will replace the word race with culture. So when he gets accused of racism, there will be, in his mind, plausible deniability. Yeah, so let me just, because unfortunately there's a lot of young people on the internet who get influenced by this garbage and some really juvenile thinkers that influenced them in that direction, including Steve King, and they go, well, yeah, right, right, Western civilization. Now I made all of them Trump. Western civilization, it's great, right, and all the other civilizations suck. That's not remotely true.

The Chinese civilization was amazing. So if you're talking about culture, there are, and I've said this a thousand times, I'm not your everyday, you know, liberal, I believe that there are differences in culture, and I believe that a lot of the cultures have wonderful parts and not so great parts, and we should actually figure out what the good parts are and take that. But that doesn't mean, if you then say, well, Western civilization is all great, and the rest of the cultures suck, you're an idiot, because that's not remotely true. It's not about being, oh, I need a safe space because you said the Chinese are bad.

No, it's not about being politically correct, it's about being factually and historically correct. So for example, if you were to say, hey, Western civilization focuses on education, well, there's a lot of that that is correct. Public education started in Scotland, and that was a wonderful, you know, basically not an invention, but a new way of doing things that greatly enhanced our society, culture, et cetera. That is why you had all those geniuses come out of Scotland, not because all of a sudden there There were more smart people in Scotland like Adam Smith and Hume, et cetera, but because more people had opportunity because of public education.

But you know who else to emphasize education? And way long before Scotland did, China, Chinese culture is all built around education. And then you go to Egypt. In Egypt, like they conveniently forget every other civilization that has done miraculous things. Europe was a bunch of peasants groveling in mud at the time that Egypt had conquered the world. Now, does that make, at that point, you had a Steve King in Egypt, they'd be like, he's like, look, obviously these Western and Eastern Europeans are the worst of the worst.

They've accomplished nothing. Egypt has built pyramids and the most amazing things that humanity has ever seen. And these white people are so stupid, they'll never amount to anything. And that would have been wrong because different advancements in cultures are based on a lot of different things, politics, economics, geography, and the course of history. So at different times, Egypt, Rome, China, the Arabs, the Ottomans have all been, the Incas, the Mayas have all been dominant for different reasons. And they had great parts of their culture and they had terrible parts of their culture,

all of them. But if you boil it down to race and me good, Western civilization, all other ones bad. You're really incredibly unsophisticated. Plus, in the case of Steve King, racist, because he keeps saying, you see it in the clips. A cantaloupe calves over here. White Western civilization, awesome. One other thing that I wanted to quickly point out is that he is very supportive

of the Confederate flag. In fact, he would display the Confederate flag in his office on his desk. He is a lawmaker from the state of Iowa. Okay, Iowa was part of the union. So it has nothing to do with the Civil War, so why is a guy from Iowa all of a sudden supporting the South in the Civil War? There's only one reason. Why, because he thought, oh, the cotton gin, God, I love the culture in the South, because

the cotton gin was so efficient. No, when you hang in Confederate flag and you're not from the South, you're saying, I like racism. I like the treasonous guys in the South historically that betrayed the United States of America and murdered American soldiers at a greater rate than any other war that we have ever had, any other opponent or enemy we have ever had. Why to protect slavery? That is a declaration of your racism. I mean, and if you didn't know all that history and you thought, hey, man, I watched Dukes

of Hazard and I thought, General Lee, the car looked cool. and I like the Confederate flag, and I'm a regular dude, I'm an accountant, and I just didn't know, okay, that's one thing. If you're a politician whose job is to know and you rub it in people's face and you have all these other videos out there, I mean, really, we're having this conversation about whether Steve King's racist. We just gave you the tip of the iceberg when it comes to video evidence of his statements in regard to race and in regard to religion.

So here is a video of Steve King. he was defending the use of the Confederate flag, and then he decided to defend the use of something else. When I go to Germany and they've outlawed the swastika, I look at them and I think we have a First Amendment, that can't happen here in the United States because we're open enough. Wow, okay, so look guys, I believe in the First Amendment, and we defend it to the Hilt in every case, including when the right wing say terrible things. So I believe it in principle.

And so I would not ban the swastika here, okay? But it is one thing to say, even though the swastika is as abhorrent a flag as you could possibly find, we still should not ban it. It's another thing to say, as Steve King just said, as you saw, I mean, I go to Germany, I don't know why they got the swastika banned, I don't know, maybe, you know, we don't have a ban here because we're open-minded. Wait, open-minded to what? Open-minded to what?

of 13 million people under that flag and under that banner. Look, it's one thing to say, I protect offensive speech, it's easy to protect non-offensive speech, even those scumbag Nazis that killed all those people, I will defend their rights. It's another thing to say, hey, I'm open-minded, why don't we have swastikas here? So he has this long record, I mean, we just gave you some of the examples. There's more out there, but if we were to do that, we would dedicate an entire show to it. So we're gonna move on to what the Republican said in regard to his New York Times interview. Now again, nothing else set Republicans off.

They didn't speak out against Representative King. In fact, most Republicans would make excuses for him, defend him. And then now all of a sudden you have people like Mitt Romney, for instance, coming out aggressively against Representative King. Here's what he has to say. What was that conversation? It was about how those words got plugged into our dialogue, not when the words became offensive as, which is what the technical interpretation this is, how did that language become offensive?

It's how did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue. Who does that? How does it get done? How do they get by? I don't think there's a room for Steve King's comments in polite company or in the Republican Party or for that matter in Congress. I think you had to step aside, and I think Congress ought to make it very clear. He has no place there. So essentially calling him to step down as a representative. So I'll say this, look, even though I think that the Republican Party has been doing this

for decades, it's called a Southern strategy. It was meant to appeal to racist in the South and to get them to switch from the Democratic Party, which they used to support, to the Republican Party. And it was stunningly successful, they did switch over. That is why the Republicans now control all the red states in the south. And by the way, to give credit to the RNC, two different heads of the RNC, Republican National Committee, have apologized for the Southern Strategy because it was racist. And to this day, they still use code words, et cetera.

The reason the Romney's and the Kings of the Romney's of the world get upset at Steve King and Donald Trump is they're like, you are revealing our ugly face. We are supposed to protect and hide that while we do the same. exact things. Now, but to give them credit, it still matters to call out Steve King. It still matters to say, no, that's beyond the pale. Because that is also about our culture. You want to talk about real culture?

Do we accept bald-faced racism, open racism, out of the closet racism, or don't we? So for Romney and Joni Ernst, there's so many others to come out and say, no, not acceptable, that's still a positive step. Yes, so Representative McCarthy and Representative Steve Stewart also came out against King denounced his statements, called for him to step down in some cases. And so you're right, I'm glad that they're finally realizing what's going on. But on a recent episode of No Filter, when I had yesterday, you know, for a very long time, people like Ben Shapiro, even after watching and responding directly to some of the videos

that I showed you today, he would make excuses for King. I don't know what it is about this recent New York Times interview that changed their mind. But I guess all it took was this particular quote to make them realize, yeah, let's believe who Steve King is when he tells us who he is. And the reason is because Ben Shapiro, Mitt Romney, et cetera, they don't mind the underlying racism, they just and bigotry, they don't mind it. The mind, the fact that it was revealed. My God, Steve King, you're so unsophisticated, your Trump level unsophisticated, that you

say, what's wrong with white supremacy? Well, then I gotta banish you, you idiot? Now, to give you, look, one last quote, because this is what Ben Shapiro, Mitt Romney, and all the rest thought was good enough. Steve King has said, we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. Now, if it isn't about race, what do you mean somebody else's babies? If it's about culture, why couldn't Latinos love Western civilization? My dad was born a Turkish Muslim in southeastern Turkey, he's atheist now, but he came in.

He loves American culture, and that's part of why we moved here, loves it, right? So, but what do you mean somebody else's babies? Well, I would be, I guess, somebody else's baby, right? And to Steve King, it doesn't matter how much I love. I love American culture. It doesn't matter how much my dad believed in the American dream and moved his whole family here, because that's somebody else's babies. So obviously, he's talking about race, but that line was not enough.

It was not enough, no. In fact, Shapiro defended him when it came to that specific tweet. He put that out there as a tweet when he was defending a right-wing politician in a different country. But look, again, finally, I'm glad that people came to their senses and they're denouncing this, and it does hold wait to denounce it. It does hold weight to come out against someone who openly, on a regular basis, makes statements that are prideful of his white supremacy and prideful of his ideology that other races are beneath the white race.

Now, with that said, there's another element to the story that I want to touch on. Working in the news business, you come across various videos or tweets coming from representatives like Representative Steve King that make it abundantly clear what his ideology is on race. He has been making statements about race for years now, and he puts down Mexicans, blacks, Jewish people. He once defended the use of swastikas. And so it's curious that NBC did not want to run. prefer to Steve King as a racist.

In fact, their standards department put out a letter or a memo to the employees at NBC, encouraging them to quote, be careful to avoid characterizing King's remarks as racist. It is okay to attribute to others as in what many are calling racist or something like that. That was from Susan Sullivan, NBC's Standards Division department is where she works in. And Huffington Post reported on this because one of their staffers reached out to Huffington Post with this memo. And then after the Huffington Post wrote about it, they changed course, writing quote, we revised our guidelines on Representative Steve King's comments.

It is fair to characterize King's comments as racist and to point out that he has a history of racist comments and the context can be shared that others hold that view as well. Yeah, so this is the most extreme case of what aboutism and both sides do it. You know, some people say supporting white supremacy is racism and others say it isn't. But white supremacy is by definition racist. It says that whites are superior to other races. Now before Steve King had already made it abundantly clear, when he was on MSNBC, he talked about how, well, what other culture has ever done anything good in the world?

It's only Western civilization, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and America that has ever done anything positive. And so that was clear. He said, we can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies. That was clear. But for NBC and New York Times and all the other media organizations, no, no, no, not clear enough. But in this case, he said, what's wrong with white supremacy?

NBC's still like, yeah, but is he saying white people are superior to other races? Yeah, yeah, that's the definition. But even then, some other people are calling it racist. So I think that there are two possibilities here as to why the Standards Division put out this memo. One possibility is that we all know that journalists and the mainstream media have this obsession with appearing objective, and oftentimes they mistake objectivity with neutrality. And so, they might fear that calling it what it is and referring to Steve King's statements as racist might appear to be taking a position or having a bias.

When, I mean, the facts are on the table. You see the same videos, you see the same content that we see on a regular basis. I think that when you have that much evidence, it's okay to tell your audience the truth about who this politician really is. The other concern might be, I don't know, a possible defamation lawsuit. I don't- No way, no. But your second point is merited, it is general caution. So whether it's because of their concern about lawsuits or anything else, but mainly political

pressure, that they're like, hey, hey, don't ever call anything what it actually is. Make sure that you are politically correct rather than factually correct. So you want to talk about political correctness, this is it. And so I want to expand on what Anna was saying about neutrality and objectivity. It's not just that neutrality is the wrong standard. It is actually the opposite of objectivity. So when someone who says, I'm in favor of white supremacy, where that whites are superior to other races, and you say, well, I can't tell if he's in favor of white supremacy, some

people say he is and some people say he isn't, that is a neutral position. But that is the opposite of the objective position. He just told you he's in favor of white supremacy. So you then change the truth, change the objective truth to make it neutral, which is a lie. And so that's a great, great trick that I don't know if it was a Republican's establishment, whoever, maybe it was an honest error, I doubt it, but that's okay that unfortunately has been pounded in the heads of all of these journalists. Do not worry about the truth, be neutral, be neutral to the truth.

And that doesn't do your job, that's the opposite of being a journalist. Yeah, I completely agree with you. And NBC News was the outlet that refused to do anything with Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein. And I only bring that up because that was a giant mistake on the part of NBC. That was a huge story that they should have aired, especially with the overwhelming details and evidence that he had in that piece, but they avoided publishing it. I don't know what their reasoning was behind it, but there's this pattern emerging where it appears that NBC wants to protect people that they shouldn't be protecting.

It's your job, I'm talking about the news division specifically, to do your jobs and share the news with the American people, not try to protect your own brand by pretending like you're neutral or avoiding offending anyone in a position of power. And so, look, this one got to be easy because he couldn't have made it any easier unless he openly, I mean, saying you're in favor, you don't see what's wrong with white supremacy is about 1% different than saying, yeah, I'm a proud racist, right? So, I mean, NBC, until they got pressure, didn't even want to go to that extra percentage and they were skittish about it, but they got so much pushback that they're like, oh,

wait a minute, wait a minute, are the people at the country club that we all have drinks with, now we're saying we're doing the wrong thing, okay, then we change. Even the New York Times changed, oh my God, even if they changed, then, okay, fine. And by the way, great credit to Yashara Lee, who broke the story for Huffington Post. But on more important issues. Now, I'm not saying that the issue of racism isn't important, that's massively important, only because Steve King's on his own here. But when he came to the Republican Party versus Democratic Party versus the truth on the issue,

for example, torture during the Bush years, what they would, The standards for almost all the media companies was that you were, they said, what human rights groups and critics say is torture. And oftentimes they didn't even say that, they call it enhanced interrogation. But wait a minute, you don't have to do that caveat. It was torture according to the United States law, not just international law that we were supposed to abide by and we were, had signed on to, but US law waterboarding, let alone the physical assaults that we did, let alone the sleep deprivation, which is also torture, let alone burying

people alive or threatening to bury people alive, I should say, which we did on occasions and all those things, those are the definition according to the law of torture. But since Dick Cheney and the Republicans said, do not call a torture, otherwise we'll say you're biased, all those media organizations chose to be politically correct and not factually correct. So they would say things like what human rights groups and critics say is torture, but what Dick Cheney says is enhanced interrogation. Well, you're neutral, but you were not objective and you did not do your job.

So I think that a progressive critique of the media bothers them more than a right wing critique. Because the right wings are a bunch of knuckleheads, why don't you do propaganda for us? That's not an interesting critique. But when we challenge them on what is objective standards, then they get really uncomfortable and they don't want to have that conversation because they know they're wrong. And so I want to leave you though on a fun note and give credit to Meredith Blake with a great tweet here. When Yashirale broke the story and he tweeted out that NBC is saying don't call it racist,

but say that many people are calling it racist. Meredith tweeted, many are calling this pathetic. Yeah. So that's fun. We gotta take a break. Let's do that and when we come back, we have more stories for you, including William Barr's testimony during the hearing to confirm him as Trump's next attorney general. In one of the points, they seem to admit that Trump's an idiot.

It's fascinating. They just do it right in front of us and we all move on. I'm gonna keep pounding this home now, 25th Amendment. Amendment. Anyway, we'll explain when we come back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional

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you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on a young church. Just a couple of comments here. Ecclectic miscellaneous is that irony is that Steve King doesn't realize that he's what's

wrong with Western civilization. His backwards racist views are on the way out and human civilization will all be better for it. So I wanna just elaborate on that for a second. Yeah, so I said I love American culture in the last segment. So what do I love about American culture? That it is open to other races, other ethnicities, other cultures, and it gets better and better as we add those races and cultures and the positive parts of those cultures.

Now what don't I love about American culture in the past? Well, and unfortunately today, well the racism, slavery in the past, I mean is anybody proud of that or at least openly proud of that? I guess Steve King comes as close as you can get. So that's the part of our culture we want to lose. So if American and Western culture has a problem, it is the racism that Steve King exhibits, which he then ironically says is the best part of the culture. He misunderstands it 100%.

So thank you for sending in that comment. And that's from the member section, and our members are great about all these comments. I'm gonna read one last one here. Progressive Engineer writes in, why turn on Steve King now? Because he scraped out a win and kept a seat in Republican hands. Now he can resign, the governor appoints a replacement and the replacement runs as an incumbent without racist baggage in two years. Bingo, exactly, our members are incredibly smart.

Now they could have called out Steve King before the election, but then that might have cost the Republicans a seat. And they don't mind his racism as long as they keep the seat. And look, others wrote in about the voters of Iowa, one of 19, I believe, wrote in about that. And that's a mixed bag. So you'd be shocked at what a lot of voters don't know. Do they know every single clip we showed you?

Of course not. Do they know some of that? Do some of them know some of it? Yes. So should you blame them for the people who do know about it? Yes. But a lot of them don't. So it's a mixed bag.

But I think they're all on borrowed time there. J.D. Shulton had a great run there. I don't know if he's going to run again. If he does, I think next time he'll probably win and King barely beat him with this terrible track record. But now these comments have gotten so much. much more publicity. So if he does stay and runs in the next election, well, then a lot higher percentage of his voters

will know how racist he is. And then if after this, they still put him into office, then okay, then it's 100% on that. All right, Anna, what's next? Today, William Barr, Trump's pick for his next attorney general, had his hearing in the Senate. And the line of questioning was important, especially when you consider the fact that Barr had put out a memo criticizing the Mueller investigation into Russian collusion and Trump's possible obstruction of justice. Now, the memo raised a lot of concerns.

And also through this hearing, we found that Barr explained that he had met with Trump in 2017 about potentially joining Trump's legal team and that Trump had pressed him about what he thought about the Mueller investigation. So look, Trump doesn't like the Mueller investigation, we all know that. And the fact that he chose someone who had put out a memo that was very critical of the investigation raised a lot of red flags. But he did answer very specific questions about the investigation and what he would do in different scenarios if he were the attorney general.

And his answers were fascinating. We're gonna let you take a look for yourselves and then we'll analyze them for you. What would be your breaking point? When would you pick up and leave? When is your Jim Mattis moment when the president has asked you to do something but you think is inconsistent with your oath, doesn't that give you some pause as you embark on this journey? It might give me pause if I was 45 or 50 years old, but it doesn't give me pause right now. I am not going to do anything that I think is wrong, and I will not be bullied into doing anything

I think is wrong by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president. So with the exception of that memo that was critical of Mueller's investigation, Barr seemed to be a pretty safe pick for Trump because Barr had worked for the George H.W. Bush administration. Everyone seems to believe in his extensive experience that he's one of the best lawyers in the country. And so, again, I don't know how this is all going to come out. The Senate is controlled by Republicans. He's gonna get confirmed, we all know that. But I don't know if he's telling the truth when it comes to the Mueller investigation.

So he was George H.W. which is attorney general. So since he was confirmed for that, it seems like a layup. And we talked about when he was picked, well, he's nearly a perfect guy for Donald Trump because he is already part of the establishment. But he put out this memo saying, I think Mueller investigation's not right. I'm gonna, and I support Donald Trump. By the way, if you're a random lawyer and a lot of people have made this point all the way up to Diane Feinstein, that's my second day in a row giving her credit, saying you're in a normal

law firm. It's a good law firm. I don't know that he's one of the best attorneys in the country, but it's a very solid law firm that he's in. Why are you all of a sudden writing a memo about Mueller? Why is a random lawyer writing a memo about, he's not working on any political case at the time. He's just like, that's him raising his hand and saying, Trump, you can pick me because I'm gonna defend you.

So now the question that the senators have to decide is when he raised his hand and said, don't worry, Donald, I got your back, you should pick me. Was that the real bar? Or when today he comes in front of the Senate and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Mueller investigation, I'm gonna allow that to continue. Of course I believe in the process, and I've got principles and I would resign right away as you just saw there, is that the real bar? Look, my experience of having covered politics for over two decades is that when they're

in front of the Senate, that is not the real person. Of course. Nine out of ten times they are lying. Now you're not supposed to say that in polite company, you're only supposed to say about Donald Trump because he's so obvious, right? But a lot of these establishment figures lie through their teeth, and they go, especially justices. They go up and they go, oh my God, I'm just going to call balls and strikes, politics.

I never heard of politics, what's politics? And then they go in and whether they're conservative or liberal, they vote with conservatives or liberals almost every time, except the liberals will then vote with corporate interests as well. So, and they'll proudly declare that as well. So basically, it's very impolite for us to point out that the track record of people in from the Senate, when they say that they will not be influenced by political, you know, they're factors, as he's saying now, their track record is terrible overall, terrible.

They're almost always lying. So this guy who got picked because of the memo, now of course says, oh, I'd like to be confirmed. Earlier my audience was Trump. Now my audience is these senators who'd like me to pretend that I'm unbiased. Well, okay, so he's gonna pretend. So what's you gonna do at the end? And I'll tell you this. So again, I'll tell you things that you won't hear in the rest of the media.

He will do whatever is good for himself. So if he feels like, hey, Trump's going to make it and he's going to survive and then I'll be his attorney general for a long time and I'll be great for my career, then he'll back Trump. If he thinks, oh wow, this is really bad, Trump's going to go under, I will be a man of principle and people will applaud the principles that I have, I will stand up to Donald Trump. That's how he'll make the decision. Well, let's take a listen to more of his testimony in regard to the Mueller investigation.

He was asked about it throughout this hearing, and I wanted to share this one final video about it with you. You say you've known Mueller a long time, would you say you have a close relationship with Mr. Mueller? I would say we were good friends. Would you say that you understand him to be a fair-minded person? Absolutely. Do you trust him to be fair to the president and the country as a whole?

Yes. I believe it is in the best interest of everyone, the president, Congress, and the American people that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work. I will not permit partisan politics, personal interests, or any other improper consideration to interfere with this or any other investigation. I will follow the special counsel regulation scrupulously and in good faith. And on my watch, Bob will be allowed to finish his work. Do you believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt against anybody? I don't believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt. Do you believe that Attorney General Sessions had a conflict because he worked on the Trump campaign? I'm not sure of all the facts, but I think he probably did the right thing recusing himself.

So these guys are so political. Can I add something to that? The last statement in regard to recusing himself. So he was asked about whether he would recuse himself if ethics officials had recommended that he'd do so. And he made it clear that he would listen to their recommendation, but that he would ultimately make the final decision as to whether or not he recuses himself. I think that that wording is telling, even in this context where it's clear that people

who are being asked these questions in these hearings usually tell them what the senators want to hear, he still wasn't willing to say, yes, I would listen to the ethics officials and I would recuse myself upon their recommendation. Just want to put that out there. Yeah. Look, give him credit for being savvy. Why did you write the memo saying the Mueller investigation is wrong unless you were were planning to, you know, be considered for this position.

There's no other reason, okay? So, and now why are you saying the opposite during your testimony? You're saying the opposite because you want to be confirmed. And you think the senators won't confirm you if you say the same thing that you said in the memo, which is the Mueller investigation is unacceptable, et cetera, et cetera, right? So now all of a sudden he seems like he literally said, Bob Mueller, me, we're great friends, We're good friends. Bob Mueller would never do anything wrong.

Then why'd you write the goddamn memo, right? So you'll excuse me if I don't believe him. But I'm telling you, right, I'm not making a prediction that he's going to back Trump. He's going to do it based on what is good for his career. That's who William Barr is. Now there was one other part of these hearings that I was amused by. It's maybe not the most important part of the meeting or the hearing, but I want to share it with you guys.

During William Barr's Senate hearing and confirmation process for Attorney General, he had this interaction with Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, about Donald Trump's attention span. Here's how it went. I talked to his staff and I said, you know, I want to follow up and send something to rod in writing, but is he a one-pageer kind of guy or, you know, how much will he read? And the guy said, he's like you. He doesn't mind waiting into a dense legal manner. Don't you think President Trump is a one-pager kind of guy?

Excuse me? President Trump is a one-pager kind of guy. I suspect he is. Okay, just remember that. Go ahead. Yeah. That is amazing. That was such a weird admission.

Like, why didn't Lindsay Graham even bring that up? Trump's not going to be happy about any of these questions from Graham in that sense. That was amazing. They were just making fun of how dumb Trump is. Yeah. They just did it out in the open during this hearing that everyone's watching. Let's talk about it in the context of other professions. So by one page or in case you're unclear about it, and because we've done a lot of reporting

on it, Trump won't read anything past one page. And a lot of times his staffers have said, even on the one page, you gotta put pictures or put his name in there a lot, so it'll draw his attention. I mean, I don't have to continue, that's so pathetic, but I will just in case. Imagine if there was an engineer who was a one pager. Oh, no, no, Bob will only read one page of how you build that bridge. But there's a lot of pages to how we build that bridge or that building. No, no, Bob's a one pager.

Imagine if he was a doctor. Well, Bob will only read that one page about how to do brain surgery. No, but there's, wait a minute, there's a lot of pages in how you do brain surgery. No, he's a one page. But it applies to everything. jobs that aren't, you know, life and death professions, like what we do. So would you trust anyone who delivers the news based on what they read on one page? Well, then you shouldn't watch TV because all they do is read the prompter.

And they didn't write there. Almost no anchor on television writes what they read. Rachel Maddow is an exception. There's a couple of other exceptions. But outside of that, their producers write it and they come on air and go, okay, the prompter says, right? But no, but back to Trump, being a one pager means you're not very bright. You're juvenile, and look, don't get me wrong, if you're annoyed by a 28, 38 page document

on policy, I hear you, but then you probably shouldn't, then you shouldn't be president. So if it turns out that the North Korea conflict is more complicated than one page, we need the president to read past one page, but he won't do it. And look, here, this is not Democrats, these are not liberals. Lindsay Graham is one of his top allies, and that's why I was amused that he gratuitously brought it up. Lindsay Graham's like, he's a one pager, right? And the guy who's gonna be his attorney general, I was like, yeah, I suspect so.

Okay, 25th Amendment. If the president cannot read past one page, 25th Amendment, you gotta get him out of office, He's not qualified to be president. I mean, what if we're talking about a nuclear situation where you gotta read into page two? And he's like, nope, nope, you gotta make that one page really strong, because I only read the one page. If in page two, the whole world blows up, sorry, I'm a one pager. Okay, I'm gonna ask our director to cue up that video again.

Don't go to it yet, I will toss to it. Because they're talking about how dumb Trump is, like out in the open, right? And it's incredible because I don't think William Barr. expected it, and what I love about this video, look, you guys have to understand, like, there's very little joy in the job I do right now, right? So when I come across these amusing interactions, I'll watch them over again just to give me some hope, just to keep me going. And so I just couldn't help but notice William Barr's face as Lindsay Graham was asking the question. And I just want you guys to pay attention to how caught off guard he was.

Let's watch it again. I talked to his staff and I said, you know, I want to follow up and send something to rot in writing, but is he a one-pageer kind of guy, or, you know, how much will he read? And the guy said, he's like you. He doesn't mind waiting into a dense illegal man. Don't you think President Trump is a one-pager kind of guy? Excuse me? President Trump is a one-pager kind of guy? I suspect he is. Okay, just remember that. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm glad we play that video again, because I'm also amused by the smiles on everyone else. Yeah, the lady behind Barr. Yeah, the lady behind Barr is like, yeah, one-pageer idiot, right?

And I don't know if she's a Republican or Democrat. And then Feinstein's next to Lindsay Graham, she woke up out of her nap to be like, yeah, one-pageer, right? Look at her face, right? Okay, now, not yet, because Graham has, and by the way, if you're misunderstood what he's saying because you didn't have enough context there, he was asking if Rod Rosenstein's a one-pageer kind of guy. And they're like, no, like you, he wades into the policy.

he's actually a smart person and cares, right? So Fystein, now she starts smiling, the lady in the background smiling, they're all smiling like, yeah, that's right, we have an idiot for a president. That's so funny, he's totally incapable of doing the job, but we're all pretending that he is. No, no, no, we probably shouldn't do the 20th Amendment. That's so funny. Oh, come on, you made it all serious.

No, you're right, you're right, right. Right now, do it right now, man. The guy is incapable of leading anything. He can't lead it out of a wet paper bag. He led his own business into six different bankruptcies, okay? And he, gee, I wonder why he was bankrupt six times. If you can't read past page one and you got a loan like he did with a Taj Mahal at 14%, you might find out on page two that you can't afford that loan.

Oops, he's a one pager, moron. I gotta say this, last, sorry, Anna, last thing out from me, I am the bad guy for calling Trump stupid. The rest of the media says, well, that's unacceptable. No, no, no, you guys are being politically correct. You're saying, well, some people say he's like a smart person, Trump says that, okay, and some people say otherwise, actually almost no one in the media says what is plainly obvious. The president is a moron.

And everyone knows it, but in order to be polite and politically correct, they won't say it. And that's the difference between us and them. You all know it. Even if you're a conservative, you know it. I desperately want a TYT, shop TYT t-shirt that has Trump's face on it with a quote, one pager kind of guy. She's just one page. I will wear that shirt on this show with a blazer, okay?

That's how much I would love that shirt. Anyway, all right, we got to take a break. When we come back, there's some breaking news, but let's gather our deets and then we'll come back with that more. 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.

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Go. 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 set. All right, back on a Young Turks, we do have breaking news for you in a sec, but let me read a couple of your comments first. This is all from the members section in the beginning. And you know what, I'm going to give a shout-outs to two members right now.

Steve Webba and Dakota Darkstar. How's that for an awesome name? And how are you not in a Quentin Tarantino movie? Okay, t.com slash join to become a member of the Young Turks. Warnie writes in, this goes towards Anna's theory that Lindsay Graham is secretly trying to oust Trump. Yes, yes, my theories are good. I've seen a couple of people tweeting about that.

You started a fire there, Anna. Ecclecting miscellaneous says Trump's a one-pageer, let's hope he's also a one-termer or less. Ethan says, you need to undergo a line detector test to become a cop in San Diego. Can we start attaching politicians to them once a year to get answers? and for confirmations. We're onto something there. In Rebel Headquarters tonight, I got Richard Orjetta, and he's the one that came up with the idea of putting body cams on lobbyists. So maybe we could also do lie detectors for politicians.

I'm gonna go to Twitter for a second. Laura Gelizunis with a shout out to another show and host, which I'm happy to do. The only mainstream media I watch with some regularity is Maddo. I enjoy her history lessons and deep dives into subjects. Hear you on that, Laura, thank you. So let's see the breaking news. All right. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York has announced that she plans to run for the 2020 presidential election.

She did so during an appearance on Stephen Colbert Show, The Late Show, and she said, quote, I'm going to run for President of the United States because as a young mom, I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I fight for my own. which is why I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. She also said it's why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids. It shouldn't matter what block you grow on. I believe that anybody who wants to work hard enough should be able to get whatever job training they need to earn their way into the middle class.

Now just a quick note on health care, back during Obama's administration when he was pushing for the Affordable Care Act, Kirsten Gillibrand did in fact join the so-called Blue Dog Democrats in fighting him on that. And these are all things that will be hashed out as the primaries move forward. But I do also want to quickly make a note about the type of news alerts I received about her announcement. So if you just juxtapose what I'm about to read to you with what we've heard about Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, you know, progressive candidates, you'll notice a pretty

significant difference. So for instance, Vox's news alert said, quote, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a long-time advocate for gender equality and me too is forming a 2020 presidential exploratory committee. That sounds pretty positive. It was very positive, which is fine, okay. And the Washington Post, Senator Gillibrand to run for president, she enters the Democratic race with a focus on gender issues. I remember the same things that they said about Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders enters a 2016 race with a focus on fighting for the middle class and combating income inequality and fixing the problems in our country. Oh yeah, that's what they were all about, right? Or maybe they wrote over a sexist Bernie Sanders dares to run when he's obviously too old and has all these other problems in his past, right? Yep. And I said, look, Warren announced negative stories. Bernie Sanders has not even announced a negative story after negative.

story. And the list goes on when it comes to progressives. And I said, well, I said it on the show yesterday. Let's wait. Let's see when establishment figures announce, are they going to get hit immediately with negative stories? And look at that. We have Jillibrand is more of an establishment figure. And already the headlines are glowing. Oh, Gillibrand has graced this race with her presence. On Bernie Sanders, my favorite line out of all the different hatchet jobs in just the last couple of weeks was, I mean, so much of the Democratic Party has already adopted his position, so hasn't he become irrelevant by winning so much? What?

How did you turn that into a disadvantage? It's incredible. It's incredible. So, look, we'll see how this all plays out. But just based on the stories that broke today on her announcement, there's a lot of emphasis on gender equality and social issues. And those issues are important. I'm not trying to minimize that, but those issues are also the social, the social issues

that Democrats, establishment Democrats are hyper focused on, so they don't have to focus on the harder questions. So corporate greed in America, income inequality, you know, she did mention health care, so I give her credit for that, but universal health care, holding private insurance companies accountable. Those are things that people like Hillary Clinton did not focus on enough, and she relied heavily on the fact that she was a woman who was pushing for gender equality. We're seeing similar language from Gillibrand right now, it might change, but it's something

to keep an eye on moving forward. Okay, so, looks, a lot of the candidates are complicated, and so I don't want people to oversimplify. So is Gillibrand bad on all the issues because she's an establishment Democrat? No, not at all. And I actually think that her fight to advocate for survivors of sexual violence is fantastic. And you might say, hey, that's a layup, that's pretty easy if you're a Democrat. But hey, she took it on and she did it.

So give credit where credit is due and she's been on the right side on many issues. And lately she's come over the right side on even better issues, Medicare for all, not taking corporate pack money, et cetera. So keep it open mind in that sense. But also at the same time, the mainstream media. They will be confounded. They're like, why would any progressives have a problem with Kirsten Gillibrand? I just, they can't understand it.

So I'll explain it. So they're not sure if she's being genuine. In Washington saying that is just sacrilege, are you saying that a politician might not be genuine? Yes, yes, that is what we're saying. So let's clarify that, okay? So why in Gillibrand's case, would you be concerned about that? So there's small things, like they asked her, right, she was just in a Senate race. And right before the election, they asked her, well, it seems like you're gonna run for president.

So are you gonna run for president or serve out your term, your six year term if you win this race? And so just two months ago, she said, I will serve my six year term. She wins the election, turns around, I will run for president right away and not serve my six year term. Well, okay, well, that's politician speak. So you didn't have to say that, you're going to win that race anyway, but she can't help herself. So there's the, hey, I'm for Medicare for all now, okay, and that's great. And then there's the platitudes, the Beto O'Rourke, like, I'm a mom, and then I'm going to fight

for other moms and other kids, that's great, but if you ask me, hey, if you're getting in the race, why would you get in the race? I'm going to get money out of politics, that's my job, that's my mission, there's corruption, We're gonna end the corruption and then we're gonna get Medicare for all in Green New Deal, not because I care about other dads. What does that mean? I care about the children, what does that mean? What do you, why did you get into the race?

So, okay, but most importantly, if you can say, hey, those things are small, everybody says they're gonna serve their full term and they never do, et cetera, right? But there's a big one, the fact that she was a blue dog Democrat. So now, people in Washington will think that they're savvy when they point out, but did you know progressives, that she was in the 20th district in New York, which is a little bit more conservative, so it's a little bit more purple. And so she had to say be in the blue dog Democrats and be a moderate Democrat. And then when she ran for senator in all of New York, which is far more progressive, then she

had to pretend to be more progressive. Yeah, we do know that, that's why she's pretending. Or we're worried that she's pretending. And so, but to them, that's savvy. No, it's not savvy. It's disingenuous. And so I don't know which Gillibrand we're going to get. The Blue Dog Gillibrand or the progressive Gillibrand.

If I was positive that she has the policy positions today that she says she has and that she's going to stick with him that I would have very few issues with Kirsten Gillibrand. She's on the right side of a lot of the issues. But she came to that right side over the course of the last year before she was a conservative Democrat. Now there's a guy in the race who's been on the right side for 40 years. Now look, I tell you that because it's not about attacking Gillibrand and is she, should we ride her out of town, should she not be a Democratic senator?

No, I'm thrilled to have her as a Democratic senator, especially given her stated positions today. But we're trying to choose who would be the best candidate for the Democrats. So all that in service of keep an open mind, let's hear out Gillibrand, maybe she has a wonderful answer for why she was a blue dog Democrat and is now a progressive. So let's hear that answer. But if you come into it with a note of caution, well, that would be understandable given the track record.

And to be clear, you should come into this election with a note of caution in regard to every single candidate. You should have a healthy level of skepticism when it comes to the proposals that these politicians claim they support. I think one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make, and this mistake happens in every election cycle, is assuming that you know the candidate, that you know the politician. They do change their tone, they do change their policy positions depending on which audience they're speaking to in a lot of cases.

So just be aware of that and look at their voting record. I think that their voting record says way more about them than what they say on the campaign trail. And more importantly, I think that since this is her announcement and she decided to be hyper-focused on social issues and gender equality as like her initial platform position, I think it says something. That's what she wants to focus on. That's what she wants to be known for.

It's not about income inequality. And I think that that might say something about what she really represents. But who knows? I could be wrong. I just know that if I were going to announce that I'm running for president, I would want to have my most important policy position front and center from the very beginning. So look, last two things on this. To Anna's point, I think that I was not careful enough about Beto O'Rourke when he was running

the Senate race. And I want to talk more about that in the post-king, because it's a long topic. So t-yt.com slash join to become a member, and we'll talk about it, I want to spend some time saying what I got right and when I got wrong in that Senate race with Beto O'Rourke, and why we got to be careful about politicians, that's absolutely true. And the last thing is, a lot of times the establishment Democrats will twist what Progressive said completely around. So Anna is concerned that she's putting out the Me Too movement as her primary issue.

Is that because they will then twist it and say, oh, you see that Anna Kasparian doesn't care about the Me Too movement? No. Because we assume that the Me Too movement is obvious. I mean, fighting against sexual violence is obvious that those should not be difficult positions in the Democratic Party. Those should be givens, those are table stakes. If you're not on board for that, we've got no interest in you at all.

So it's to us as progressives, it's a little like bragging about, I'm also in favor of oxygen, I believe in breathing. Of course, now let's get to the hard part. Exactly, yes. All right, switching gears and moving on to Trump's administration. Rod Rosenstein has been looking into changing some of the policies in the White House in regard to spying on journalists. In particular, journalists who are reporting based on sources who leaked information to them.

Now, Trump's White House has been notorious for leaking information to reporters, and Trump has never really been able to stop these leaks from happening. So as a result, it appears based on reporting by the Hill, John Solomon at the Hill, Rod Rosenstein was looking into lowering the bar in order to have administration officials spy in on journalists. So the Department of Justice quietly has been working on a revision of its guidelines governing how, when and why prosecutors can obtain the records of journalists, particularly in leak cases. The work has been supervised by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's office. Now let me tell you how the current system works and what Trump's administration would like

to switch it to. So the current system requires prosecutors in most cases to exhaust all obvious investigative methods for identifying leaks before seeking to intrude on a journalist's free speech rights. Because as you know, journalists are protected by the First Amendment and a good journalist is not going to automatically give up his or her source just because there's pressure from the White House. So there are certain protections for the journalists, and it's important to maintain that so they can get the news to the American people so they can be informed and make the right

decision for themselves when they go out there to vote. Now, in addition, the rules generally have required DOJ to alert news organizations in advance of a possible subpoena, giving both sides a chance to negotiate before the subpoena. So that's another important part of this, right? Okay, well before we go to the nuclear option of a subpoena, let's see if we can negotiate this and figure out what's going on. Now here's what the DOJ wants to do. The ongoing DOJ review has two main goals.

The first is to lower the threshold that prosecutors must meet before requesting subpoenas for journalists records. The second is to eliminate the need to alert a media organization that justice intends to issue a subpoena. Now, they have not finalized these guidelines. In fact, it's actually unclear as to whether or not they will finalize these guidelines. But if they do, it would be bad for journalists who are reporting based on White House AIDS leaking information to them.

So I hope that I'm not nitpicking here when I read you a sentence from the Hill, which I think is problematic. Because we do read The Hill, and John Solomon works there, and he was targeted by Mueller and the FBI and wrote a wonderful piece. But in explaining the Trump position in this issue, they say that they also contend that the current rules treat journalists as a special class whose First Amendment rights are elevated above those of other Americans, something they don't believe the founding fathers intended. Well, then they had a curious way of showing it because the First Amendment doesn't just

say freedom of speech. It says freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In fact, the press, other than politicians, is the only profession mentioned in the United States Constitution. And yes, they are literally singled out in the First Amendment for extra rights. They have a freedom of the press. They bothered to say this particular occupation needs to be protected from the government. So you can repeat the Trump administration position, but you should put the next sentence

in saying that is factually incorrect, here's what the First Amendment actually says. Yeah, I mean, look, I do think you're nitpicking a little bit. I mean, if I had written this piece, I wouldn't have thought to do that and there's no ill intent. I just wouldn't think to do that. But real quick, the reason why the press is the, you know, media, it's the only occupation that's mentioned in the Constitution is because real journalism is not friendly. to people in positions of power. And so as a result, a real journalist would be a target of politicians, you know, corporate

executives, the muckrakers back in the day that actually inspired me the most were those who would investigate wrongdoings by big business in America. And so, yeah, you need those protections to ensure that you don't have the government coming after journalists for simply doing their jobs and informing the people about what people in positions of power doing? What the founding fathers actually didn't foresee is that a corporate media would grow, and that corporate media would help the politicians and those in power to actually fight against real journalists.

So for example, David Serota the other day just pointed out, hey, Beto O'Rourke is the number two recipient of oil and gas, money in Congress. It's a fact, right? You can make with that fact, you could say, hey, there's a reason for that. He's from Texas, et cetera, et cetera, but he just tweeted out a fact. And NBC News sent in Alex Seitz-Wald, who used to work for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, et cetera, to write a hit piece about Bernie Sanders supporters are now pointing out facts about other people. So now, unfortunately, a lot of the mainstream media is used to attack real reporters who are trying to challenge power and politicians, et cetera. So that is actually what the founding fathers didn't see coming.

Now there's a final component to the story that I wanted to share with all of you. William Barr is being considered as Trump's next attorney general. So the Senate held hearings to decide whether or not they would confirm him. And during an exchange with Senator Klobuchar, Barr was asked about what Rod Rosenstein is doing. And here was the reaction. I know there are guidelines in place, and I can conceive of situations where, you know, as a last resort and where a news organization has run through a red flag or something like that, knows that they're putting out stuff that will hurt the country, there might be a, there could be a situation where someone would be held in contempt. So, no, that means, yeah, I'll jail journalists, definitely. There could be a situation where we are made uncomfortable by the press.

Now, most of you are good boys and girls and you don't make us uncomfortable and we move forward, right? But if you reveal things that embarrass us, well, then obviously there's going to be consequences. So that's a terrible answer by William Barr. And look, we are not partisan. We have a point of view, we're progressive, but we're not partisan. So I can tell you that Obama was terribly wrong on this issue. And he used the espionage act against reporters. So now it's become bipartisan consensus that yeah, if a journalist reveals something that

is uncomfortable to the people in power, you should consider putting them in jail. So Trump is happy to take that precedent and run with it. Now here's his nominee for attorney general going, yeah, yeah, I might throw them in prison. Yeah, we're gonna take a break, but our conversation about the media will continue because Claire McCaskill just got hired by a mainstream media outlet will tell you which one. And she's not the only one. There's a bunch of other politicians that are getting jobs doing what journalists are supposed to be doing.

Out of all the stories today, that's the one I'm most animated about. Let's put it down way. Okay, good. I thought you were gonna disagree with me and I'm like, wow, no, no, no, no, no. I will be animated when we return. Okay. 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.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Yugar, and I'll see you soon.