The Young Turks - Republican Makes SHOCKING Admission

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Duncan Hunter raised many eyebrows with one of his latest statements. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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 Ugar, and normally, of course, I host a show with a lovely and brilliant Anna. But instead today, we have John Iderola.

Equally something? Insert two adjectives. Show, wang, wang, wang. No, I'm kidding. That's three. All right, so seriously, Anna's out on vacation this week, but we've got some great shows ahead for you guys, including tonight. John's going to come back for Ask Me Anything, which we do on Tuesdays. That's live and free and available to everyone.

But the only folks I can ask questions are members, so you can either sign up for membership through YouTube and get YouTube Young Turks membership. That's the blue button below the videos. If you're watching on YouTube, we're on a lot of different platforms, of course, and of course you can get Young Turks membership on our website at t.ot.com slash trial. You actually get a free week, see if you like it. And you're going to ask some questions tonight of John and I. We've got a lot of great guests for you guys throughout the week, including John Delaney on Friday.

a presidential candidate, so that'll be fantastic too. Might win your vote. You never know, he's been raised, he's the longest running candidate, certainly in this election cycle, he began running for president a long time ago. So curious to see his positions on Friday. All right, let's get going. We got a lot of news today about Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the rest. Trump claiming that he's basically more progressive than Biden, which is an interesting attack.

Okay, let's do this. Okay, I think I got it. Okay, Trump's new thing is pardoning members of the U.S. military charged with a variety of different types of war crimes. And in that effort, he has a lot of Republican defenders, including a California Congressman Duncan Hunter, a guy who is facing his own charges of a different variety. He's a big defender of members of the military charge with those war crimes. And in defense of them, at a recent town hall, he actually, admitted to his own bizarre behaviors, as you'll hear in this audio.

Eddie was a Navy chief, around 40 years old, and I think he's 39, 19 years in the Navy, eight or nine combat tours. There was a disagreement in their platoon. So a year after coming back, some of the seals in his platoon basically came to the agreement that they would accuse Eddie of killing the ISIS terrorists. Okay? Because Eddie did, did one bad thing that I'm guilty of too. Taking a picture with the body and saying something stupid and then texting that. So he took a picture with the body, with his knife out, and texted it to some buddies and said, I got this one with my knife.

I take a picture just like that when I was overseas. Didn't text them to anybody, didn't put them on Facebook or Instagram, but a lot of my peers, A lot of us have done the exact same thing. Okay, so to be clear, the individual that he's talking about there in comparing his own behavior to is Eddie Gallagher, someone we've talked about it several times on the show. Now, you might believe that you just heard Duncan Hunter describe the one bad thing that he did, which was taking a picture. Sort of begs the question, what did he take the picture with?

That is the corpse of a person that he had just murdered. Among the accusations against Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher, or that he stabbed and killed a wounded person. Oh, also shot at non-combatants post for a photo and performed at his re-enlistment ceremony next to a corpse. According to a charge sheet from November, Gallagher has pleaded not guilty. So, yes, he did take the picture with the corpse after making it a corpse. He also would sometimes get into the machine gun mounted in the back of an army vehicle and then begin firing at residential areas just randomly.

Yes. I don't know if he took a picture of that, though. Yeah. So Duncan Hunter has two different problems in that little speech. One is the lie and the other is the truth. So the lie is, oh, he did one little thing. No. If you notice, in the middle of Duncan Hunter's story, he said they had a disagreement in his

platoon and all of the other Navy SEALs turned him in because that's what Navy SEALs do all the time, right? Oh, it's a slight disagreement. He was jaywalking in Iraq and we all decided to turn them in. That's not what happens. No, all the other Navy SEALs turn you in when you've committed a horrible crime, including killing wounded people you've already captured or shooting at civilians wantonly, possibly leading the deaths of anyone who's on the receiving end of those random bullets, including

men, women, and children. So the fact that the other Navy SEALs turned them in should give you a pretty good sense of how bad the action here was. And by the way, credit to those guys for caring about war crimes, caring about doing their jobs right and turning in a bad apple. So a lot of times people say, oh, they're just bad apples, but the good apples never turned them in. But in this case, they did.

So it gives you the sense of the severity of the crime and the integrity of the other Navy seals. Now we get to the problem with the truth. Duncan Hunter is like, oh yeah, I committed war crimes too, I take pictures with the bodies of the dead. Now, that's not on the same level as the other crimes that we just talked about. I don't know what the ramifications for that are, I'm sure that it's wrong, and so I suppose not, I suppose I'm sure that he should be reprimand for that since he just admitted it.

So in militarily, I don't know what that, what form that reprimand would take. He didn't admit to killing anyone illegally, thank God. I don't know if he did or didn't. But the fact that he seems to diminish significant war crimes does not give you a lot of comfort. Yeah, and we're going to play a little bit more video of him that will enhance that idea, that he perhaps does not take this entire thing very seriously, even though the thing is admitted is about the lightest of all of the charges that I've heard. There are individuals who were snipers that decided to just shoot the elderly and kids

when they had no reason to believe that they were threats. Again, randomly firing to residential areas, maybe killing people, maybe it not. That's part of the game. Those are obviously far worse charges. But I do want to focus on one thing that he said in that first section. He said they all came together and they decided to accuse him. So he is sort of implying that it's just an accusation. And sure, all of these things will be investigated.

It's a bit odd that he posed next to the corpse that, what, they're saying he didn't actually kill? Everybody there agrees that he did. But the narrative there is that lawyers are, he says in one case, he says the military justice system is corrupt, and it's run by lawyers who target war fighters, as if it's this ongoing campaign to just destroy anyone who happened to serve abroad. Well, look, I haven't tracked all of the people who've been charged with war crimes in the decades that we've been fighting in that country. But I can name a few that are being considered to be pardoned, like three, four individuals. How many people served in Iraq? Tens of thousands.

If this is a campaign against our war fighters, it's still in its incipient phase, I would say. There's only a few people whose crimes rose to the level where, yes, we're having a conversation about whether this is what our soldiers should have been getting up to. Now, in the case of Duncan Hunter, a guy who has a very loose attachment to the rule of law here domestically, get an idea of what he thinks the philosophy for our warfighters abroad should be. If the American people, and if the American people want to send men like me overseas to kill bad people, then let us do that, okay?

If you don't think that we should be doing that, then maybe we shouldn't be in Iraq. Maybe we shouldn't be in Syria, maybe we shouldn't be in Afghanistan, then let's not do it at all. But don't pay me and train me to go kill bad people for our people in this country, meaning for the American people, don't have me go do that and then come home and be punished because you made me into a person that kills bad people. I was an artillery officer, and I was an artillery officer in Fallujah in 2004. We definitely killed civilians. That's what war is.

So it's not intentional. This one, this case. That's what war is. Okay, so when the reporter points out the difference between accidentally killing civilians, which is its own issue, and intentionally killing civilians, he made this noise. Yeah. As if the distinction between those two things is unimportant. Yeah, and he kept saying, you sent me to kill bad people.

Well, okay, well, there's an important qualify there. Bad people. We didn't sell you to send you theoretically to kill innocent people. As it turns out, we killed a lot of innocent people. Over the weekend, Bill Crystal and Jennifer Rubin, who writes for the Washington Post, were yelling at Bernie Sanders because he was impolite to them about the Iraq war. Well, we killed nearly a million innocent Iraqis in that war. I would argue that's slightly more impolite.

But to guys like Duncan Hunter, he just doesn't see the distinction. He's like, you said bad people, I killed Iraqis. Innocent, non-innocent, eh. So does that now ratchet up the level to which I'm? I would want to see if Duncan Hunter committed war crimes? Yep. Because he seems to not really care about that distinction at all. And no, not all Iraqis are bad people.

And not all U.S. soldiers think like Duncan Hunter. In fact, apparently most don't. And that's why these guys got turned in. There's a couple of people that Trump is thinking of pardoning. And at least two of them, including the person we've been talking about Gallagher and army major Matt Goldston argues a premeditated murder of innocent people. And so that's not what we call bad people in this country, but Duncan Hunter is a terrible guy. He's, of course, facing indictment on federal corruption charges, so he doesn't seem to

really care much for the rule of law at all. Yeah. Yeah, and just again, I remind him, he's talking about, like, hey, crazy things happen, war's a crazy time. And he's saying that all of that, whether it's firing artillery that might hit civilians, which again, that sort of chance that you might be killing civilians, one of the reasons that we should be far more careful in the military adventures that we choose to go on, is somehow the same as a soldier seeing a wounded Iraqi, taking out his knife, walking up to this person who's being treated for his wounds, and then murdering him with a knife is the same thing. I don't understand how any reasonable person doesn't hear that comparison and think

Duncan Hunter is an absolute monster who doesn't belong in the military, doesn't belong in government, probably should be being watched and, and I would assume, counseled for the obvious damage that has been done to him, because his sense of morality is at best topsy-turvy, if not shredded beyond, you know, any repair. Now, this is the guy who, of course, says we should pardon war criminals because of how much he cares about people in the service. Now, let's remind you that part of the corruption charges was that he would rip off his own donors and others and say, well, let's just pretend that we bought material for veterans

and service members. So we're not gonna give it to the people serving, of course not. I'm just gonna keep the money and spend it for my own purposes and we'll pretend that we did something good for people in service. So he doesn't really have much respect for the decent people serving the United States military either. He's happy to rip off people under their name. So that's the kind of guy Duncan Hunter is.

He barely won reelection and that does not speak well of that district. They knew a lot of these charges, not about the war crimes, but certainly about the corruption charges ahead of time. But this time running against Amar Kampa Najjar, who's his Democratic opponent, he might be on the ropes. But look, if you're in that district in California, you're gonna get to decide who you are. Because you've now seen all this. And if you think, yeah, I like that guy who doesn't care between distinguishing innocent

civilians and bad guys that were fighting, it's okay with murder and thinks that people should be pardoned and then makes a mockery of the people who serve the country by ripping off and doing corruption in their name when they didn't do any such thing. Okay, then that's who you are and enjoy that life, but that sounds pretty miserable to me. But yes, you do have another option in that district. And one more thing for context, remember that this Duncan Hunter is the guy who ran the most Islamophobic campaign ad, at least in recent history. That was very fast that they got that going.

Yeah, just accusing him of being a terrorist because of his background, the background of his family, is family heritage. And so this guy believes that if you or anyone in your family was or is Muslim, you have no place in U.S. government. He also believes that Iraqi soldiers and civilians, you can just murder them if you want. And that's totally fine, it's totally a part of the war. Like, if you believe that those are separate things, if there's not some sort of ideological connection between the way that they practice Islamophobia here in the U.S.

and the way they believe wars should be prosecuted, I think you're insane. Maybe he's insane and is a good hunter. Actually, now it all makes sense when you connected two things. His opponent is a Mark Kampanajar, who is not even Muslim. He's Christian, he's raised by his Christian mom, who is Latina. His father assigned our Palestinians. Now he doesn't have contact, certainly with the people that were in the ad. Duncan Hunter Jr. had to go back to his grandfather and accuse his grandfather of terrorism.

He never met his grandfather. His grandfather died well before Mark Kampanjar was even born. But now it actually, at least I understand the connection. Because Duncan Hunter thinks, I don't care. That guy's an Arab. He looks brown. He has a Muslim sounding name, good guy, bad guy, running for Congress or someone I'm supposed to kill, I can't quite tell.

So that's who Duncan Hunter is. Of course he's running Islamophobic ads here in America and his own election campaign. He's the guy who said who cares who they are in Iraq, just kill him. You just saw it on tape. Yeah, innocent civilians or guys were supposed to target. Yeah, who cares. So that's who Duncan Hunter is. Again, the only question that remains in his district is, who are his voters?

What do we take your first break? Yeah, all right. Now that we're done with war crimes, let's take a break. So we'll come back to Bernie Sanders, who as of right now, at least has not been accused of any. Yeah, well, no, he's actually literally been accused of being against war. The New York Times article over the weekend, or last week, was unbelievable. It's one of the most bizarre, ridiculous things I've ever seen, just accusing Bernie Sanders over and over of being for peace.

But like, to the straight face, like this guy's for peace, it has been for peace this whole life. How could this guy possibly win? It's not an opinion column. It was a straight news article about how he is gonna have trouble winning his election in the Democratic primary because he doesn't wanna rip people's throats out. And so anyway, he has two new proposals, Bernie Sanders. So we'll tell you what they are, and tomorrow the New York Times and Politico, we'll attack it. So first find out what they are when we return.

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All right, back on a young Turks. Let's go to the members. T.R.T.com slash trial, by the way, to become a member, get a free week when you go through that URL. The math and magician says, Jank and Johnny for our one, and Anna gets a much deserved vacate, definitely the hardest working woman in cable news. No one who doesn't watch news on the internet knows, L.O.L. Other than Megan McCain. Yeah, sure.

Tracy says, I love all you guys, but could you bring on mariguana a little sooner? Watching him be groomed is one of my favorite spots in my day. That was actually backed up by several people, including Chris Durand. So there's a fascinating new thing going on on the internet where you guys watch us groom marijuana. Okay. What if that got more viewers? We just ran it for the full hour.

Yeah, that would be really, really sad. Okay. Megan says, defend the seal by throwing a bunch of other seals onto the bus, Classy, referring to Dr. Hunter. Chris Box says, could we get the TYT army to shame the news into saying that all the natural disasters are consistent with what scientists have been warning us as climate change? We're trying, brother. And by the way, come out to the rally that we are having on June 8th in Des Moines, Iowa.

in Des Moines, Iowa, and you'll hear a lot about our new plans. So J.D. Shulton, who's running yes, Steve King, or he did in the past, likely to again, will speak at the rally. Richard O'Don Jetta will speak at the rally. Alison Hartson will as well. And I'm gonna unveil a new plan there that could affect the presidential race. So having you guys there be super important, t.y.t.com slash rally. And last one, Devin Nunes's German teacher says, if Hunter does not know the difference

between killing someone accidentally and on purpose, he should have never been in the military. His training failed. Yeah. Very good point. And if you're one of the 99% plus percent of members of the military who have not butchered civilians and just gone around killing people, like how mad would you be that this guy's saying, yeah, that's just what we do. That's what it's like there.

I cannot think of a greater insult to the people who did not murder randomly. By the way, if you serve with Duncan Hunter and would like to tell us about crimes he committed, just e-mails at t-y-t.com. There's a proton way of doing that. I don't know what that means, but it keeps it safe. Kenny Clips is on telegram, just message them. Okay. And then one last quick thing for you guys for today. We're going to cover to Kamala Harris's town hall, instant analysis at 11 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Pacific, okay?

And Brooke and Ida are going to join us as well. So don't miss that. I thought our coverage of Beto O'Rourke's town hall was very instructive. And I feel that I know about him a lot better now. So I'm looking forward to the Kamala Harris one. All right, John, what's next? Okay, let's talk about Bernie. Senator Bernie Sanders is working on a set of policies designed to give workers more control

over the corporations that they work for. First, a quote from Bernie Sanders about his philosophy going into these sorts of policies. He says, we can move to an economy where workers feel that they're not to be. just a cog in the machine, one where they have power over their jobs and can make decisions. Democracy isn't just the opportunity to vote. What democracy really means is having control over your life. And obviously for many people, their life a lot of the time is their job. And so he wants to give them more control over that. Sanders said his campaign is working on a plan to require large businesses to regularly contribute a portion of their stocks to a fund

controlled by employees, which would pay out a regular dividend to the workers. Some models of this fund, increase employees' ownership stake in the company, making the workers a powerful voting shareholder. So we don't know for sure that that is the model that they will go with. But even if they do not, it will provide a financial return and an incentive along the way for the workers who are actually contributing to the success of these companies. Yeah. So we're now at the point where I think we've reached how far left I am.

Okay, going further is going to go past me. Okay. Oh, he's about to. All right, well, we're gonna see about the second part of this, but this is a good proposal. So we offer stocks such as it is to the employees here at the Young Turks, but we're trying, brother. We're trying. It's closer to chicken stock than actual stocks, but.

But it is stock. So it's the right thing to do. And having the voters have an increased share of voice in a sense by being. Voting shareholders in the company is an interesting idea. Obviously some on the left go further and say that the workers should run the companies entirely. I'm not there, nor will I ever be there. I don't know. We could certainly, it's an interesting idea and all those things are worthy of discussion.

But yeah, I don't agree with that, but that is not what Bernie Sanders is proposing. He's proposing a very simple thing of let's give them some stocks. Amazing fact, 97% of all the capital income in this country, meaning stuff. stocks and interest rates that people collect, et cetera, is owned just by the top 10%. The bottom 90% only on 3%. This would actually give them more stocks and a bigger stake in the companies, which I think can also help the companies. We'll talk more about that after the second proposal.

Yeah, and at the end of this discussion, we're gonna have a little bit of the science of what these sorts of policies end up doing for the companies, and spoiler alert, it's positive, but I don't think that you need to study to know that if you are getting a financial return on the success of the company, you're going to be more invested in making sure that the company does well and you're probably gonna stick around longer, which is obviously financially beneficial for the corporation as well. Now moving to the second part of the plan, we'll see if Jank is on board. Sanders also said he will introduce a plan to force corporations to give workers a share

of the seats on their boards of directors. And so the actual board that is sort of setting the mission of the corporation, also obviously incredibly important in choosing the CEO and we know that there tends to be an oddly incestuous relationship between CEOs and their boards. This would provide more direct representation for the workers. in the most important decisions being made for the companies. Yeah, so this is, both proposals are for large companies. So I want people to understand that partly because of, you know, we're a small company

and it's a little bit different, but mainly because you guys might run small companies or you know folks that do it that are entrepreneurs, they're not going to come in and say, okay, you've got a four person shop, I need you to put the cash register person, et cetera, on your board. A lot of people would be like, what board, right? But there's small size companies, there's mid-sized companies that doesn't apply here. This is for large companies. And this is not unprecedented, Germany does it.

And Germany has a very stable economy and partly because there's labor representation on the boards. So what does that do? It stabilizes the company because then you are not as worried about, hey, I got to make my quarterly earnings so I can get a big bonus this year if I'm an executive. But if, hey, that winds up being too risky in the long run, who cares? Because as long as I made my bonus, that's what happens here in America. But in places like Germany where labor's on the board, they go, we care, we care. We want to make sure that the company is healthy in the long run, we care a lot less about

your goddamn bonus, then we do that this company is successful in the long term. So it provides the correct incentives rather than the wrong incentives. The reason why I wouldn't go further than this, in my opinion, one of the issues of just completely employee run companies, which there aren't that many of here in America to begin with, and I might, you know, and I will get experts on the show and talk it out, et cetera, is that, well, then, of course, you're going to want to protect the current employees, and that makes sense, and we all want to do that. I hope we do if you're running a company, you care about the people in the company,

but that might not always be the best idea for the long-term health of the company, that perhaps new employees can come in, et cetera. But a mixed model like this has clearly shown success throughout the world. Yeah, and we don't yet have more details on Sanders' plan, although that is forthcoming. But what's interesting, the little wrinkle right now, is that Sanders is in this election, not the only one with these sorts of ideas. And in fact, there is competition directly in this area. So Senator Elizabeth Warren, she's proposed a co-determination plan that would require

U.S. corporations worth more than $1 billion to let company employees select 40% of the companies board of directors. So a similar sort of idea except with the specifics. Now, 40% of a board is a large percentage of the board, but requiring it for only corporations with $1 billion or more in value means that it will not affect the vast majority of corporations, of course. Yeah. So I think it helps them make more holistic decisions and it's been borne out by the countries

that have tried it. So the executives don't want it at the larger companies because they think, well, then I got care about my employees. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so look, those are the two big ones that we're waiting for, but in this area, Sanders has already introduced a number of ideas, sort of, I would say, lend to, I think, his claim of being at least tied for, if not the best on workers' rights out of the 57 people

are running for president right now. Additionally, he has reintroduced in the Senate a series of measures to increase the percentage of the American workforce in employee-owned ownership models. Those policies include a $500 million bank to finance company transitions to worker cooperatives, new legal requirements that owners give their workers an opportunity to purchase firms that are closing, and federal funding to create centers in all 50 states that would encourage employee-owned businesses. So all of these designed to move us not to some sort of communist fantasy or whatever.

God knows what Fox and friends are going to say about this tomorrow, but to make sure that the actual workers who are working for these corporations that are determining whether they are successes or failures will actually have some say in that. Yeah, I love a couple of quotes from this article. Referring to the last thing that John just explained to you guys, they say in the Washington Post in particular, these ideas are not gaining traction in the Republican-controlled Senate. You think? Yeah.

And then earlier they said, well, there is critiques of these Bernie Sanders ideas. This was like, okay, that's interesting, because I think that, you know, if it went too far and applied to midsize of smaller businesses, there could be legitimate critiques as we just touched upon. No, the critiques are it discourages entrepreneurs from starting businesses and will lead investors to seek to put their money overseas. Okay, hilarious. Okay, I don't know any successful entrepreneur who is like, well, I was going to start a business. But then they said, you have to care about your employees once you get through a billion dollars. Well, God damn it, I'm not starting it anymore. Preposterous, totally preposterous.

And so secondly, this is a threat that corporations do all the time. Oh yeah, we'll move our business overseas where they don't give a damn about employees, then you'll see, right? Well, I love how you claim to be patriotic. They're like, no, no, no, we're corporate America, right? Sounds like Captain America, right? You're not Americans, you're a machine, and you just threatened us. I don't know if you know that, right?

It's pretty clear and say, well, where are you going to go? You're going to go to Germany? No, they have stricter laws. And almost all of Europe, they have stricter laws and in a lot of Asia as well. So yes, you could find some countries where there's a race to the bottom, of course. But then you know what we could do? We're like, oh, okay, great, you want to move to Vietnam? Okay, no problem, you're no longer an American company, you can't get any contracts

with federal government. Oh, no, no, but I'm American, I want a federal government. No, no, no, no, no, you just said you're not American. Oh, you want to take advantage of tax loopholes in Ireland or in other places or the Cayman Islands? No problem. You're not an American company anymore. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Which one are, pick a lane, dude, pick a lane.

You don't want any more federal government contracts? No problem at all. Vietnam, here you go, right? And I don't mean to pick on Vietnam. There are many other countries that do that. But so, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. These are reasonable ideas that actually help because they stabilize companies. And they help the American worker.

Yeah. Oh, you want to move to some other news? Okay. Okay. Under Donald Trump, the EPA is not what it used to be, and it is coming for your land, it's coming for your air, it's coming for your water. And in just a like 24 hour period, multiple different ways that the EPA is trying to destroy the environment that you rely on for life.

So let's talk about two pieces of news. This just happened in the past day. Director of the U.S. Geological Survey James Riley, a White House appointed former oil geologist ordered that scientific assessments for the potential impact of climate change only use computer generated models that track that impact until 2040. Now, if you're not a scientist and if you're not trying to assess how much damage climate change is going to do, it might seem like going out a couple decades makes a lot of sense. But there's a reason that they're choosing to cap that at 2040 rather than going to the end

of the century as these models have been doing of late. The idea is that the actual effects of climate change, the most negative ones, begin to ramp up after 2040. And so if you cap it there and say, we don't want to know what happens after that, then you can pretend that, hey, maybe things will be okay. We don't necessarily know how bad it's going to be. And previously, as I pointed out, they usually go until the end of the century, when the effects are far, far worse.

And just recently, a few months ago, the U.S. government put out a report talking about the incredible toll in terms of both money and American lives that will be lost by the end of the century due to out of control climate breakdown. They're not interested in having any more reports like that, and so by simply cutting off when you can analyze to, they're hoping to pretend to lull you and a false sense of security when it comes to the climate. Okay, let's come up with a fun outlandish example. So let's say aliens planted a bomb in the middle of the earth that could make the whole

planet explode and the scientists found it. Oh, wonderful, they did a great job, right? I heard about that on Alex Jones, actually. Is that right? It's possible. And scientists say it is likely to go off somewhere between 2038 and 252. And Trump says, let's stop studying that bomb after 2040. You'd say, that doesn't seem like a good idea.

You might catch it in 2038 and 2039, but if you stop studying it, maybe it's going to go off in the bigger portion, right? And of course here, climate change is not like a bomb, it is more gradual. but it is happening all throughout. We're in the middle of it now. It's not like it's going to start at a later date, but it does get progressively worse and worse. And hence, capping it at 2040 is obviously done to make sure that you don't know the full science and the full facts. And so, you know, I had a guest on the conversation a little while ago, and I asked him he was a scientist if there's any Republican scientist left.

And I don't know, that's a genuine question. I don't know how you could be a scientist and still remain a Republican. It's got to be deeply embarrassing the whole party's against what you do. And so, okay, so are you proud if you're a Republican scientist? Like, that's right, we should stop doing science after 2040. Don't let anybody know what's going to happen. If that's your kind of science, maybe you should find another field. Yeah, and it's also amazing that, I mean, this is the party and the individual,

Donald Trump, who says, I alone can protect you. I'm the only one that can save you from these threats. And yet, when it comes to gun violence, they don't let us actually track how many deaths there actually are. Now they want to make it so that we blind ourselves to what is going to happen with our climate. How are you going to protect us from something that you won't even look at? You won't even acknowledge what's going on and you're supposed to be our defender. And yet, they maintain that reputation.

But there was one other piece of news in the environment. This is perhaps less important on a global scale, but still pretty shocking when you see the details. The EPA released a notice on Thursday of last week requesting public comment on its proposal to raise the maximum level allowed for a chemical used in literal rocket fuel, which is linked to thyroid problems to 56 micrograms per liter. This is three times higher than what the EPA previously recommended as a safe level for drinking water. Now what is important about that is not just that they are saying you can have three times

as much of it, but that before it was just a recommendation. It was not any sort of like legal requirement. But this actually will be establishing a legal requirement just three times higher. And if that sounds bad, it's actually worse because the EPA is seeking comment on three other alternate options, setting the level to 18 micrograms per liter, to 90 micrograms per liter, or simply abolishing the rule regulating it at all. So you can just pour as much rocket fuel as you want into our water or chemical used in it. Yeah, globally it might be less of a problem because Botswana doesn't have to drink. our water, but locally for your kids and for your family, it could be a very, very significant problem.

So let's, I want to give you context. So the standard under Obama was 15 micrograms per liter of rocket fuel is allowed in water because that is small enough the thought was, and as John just told you as a suggestion was not codified yet as a law, 15, okay, keep that number in mind. Now a lot of people think that that's actually too high, in fact, there are laws on the books in California, that it should be six. In Massachusetts, it's only two. So that's two micrograms per liter that is allowed.

So already the Obama standard was way above California, and as you can tell, seven and a half times the size of Massachusetts legally allowed limit. Now the proposal here is for 56, the Trump people are saying, but it could go all the way up to 90 or unlimited. So they're like, hey, hey, be cool. We're cranking it up to 56, that's nearly four times the Obama level, that's, let's see if I can do this math right, 28 times the Massachusetts level, 28 times the Massachusetts level, or if you don't follow along, we'll make it twice as bad or infinitely bad.

But that pretty much describes the Trump administration overall. If you don't like how terrible we've made things, we can make it twice as bad. or infinitely bad. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess at this point, there have been so many awesome campaign ads that have just been designed for the opposition, but they want your kids to drink more rocket fuel. Seems like a winner to me.

Yeah, unfortunately they're Democrats, so they're very unlikely to do those ads. Okay, so last thing on this, so what does rocket fuel do to folks? Well, it produces hormones or it disrupts your thyroid's ability to produce one. hormones, I should say, needed for normal growth, and it can affect reproductive issues. So, ironically, you know those conspiracy theories that Alex Jones has about gay frogs and the feminization of society because of what's in the water, it turns out his boy Trump is the one that wants to do that in a way that could actually do it, right? As opposed to nonsense conspiracy theories, this could actually affect the thyroid, the hormones,

and all the other things that they talked about. And what do they do now? Are they turn around and all those people who were doing those conspiracies? Oh my God, it turns out, Trump's the lizard people, right? No, they're like, yeah, that's right. Rocket fuel the water. Let's, you know, make sure we screw around with our hormones. Yeah!

You seem a little bit like you've been drinking some rocket fuel. You're a little bit excited right now. We are trying to prevent that. The folks who previously pretended to warn you about that are now totally hunky-dory because their dear leader has told you that it's a great idea for your kids to drink rocket fuel. It's not. Yes, for the record, it's not.

Okay, so why don't we take another break? And when we come back, where is Robert Mueller and Donald Trump launches a new attack against Joe Biden? We'll see how your response. Yeah, and Mueller, I'm starting to get pissed. So we'll talk about that one. 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.

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I use it because I want to make sure that nobody looks into the things that we're doing on our computers, so protect yourself, NordbPN.com slash D.YT. All right, let's go to member comments. Gabby Marita says, this is the first primary I can recall genuinely supporting multiple candidates. Bernie and Warren keep one upping each other in policies, and I love it. Yes, they're genuine, they're, almost all of them have been great policies so far. And isn't it refreshing to have a couple of different people who might actually represent you?

Like before, if it was one, it was a minor miracle. Usually it'd be, for most of my life, it was zero. And we even even mentioned Klobuchar. Yeah. Okay. We're going to talk about Klobuchar in the second hour. I got choice thoughts there. I bathed in a very stable geniuses, tears, writes in,

workers who have a stake in a company success will often work harder for it. So goes the theory. I'm playing around. All right. Mike says, unfortunately Donald Trump thinks a hormone is something that requires $100,000 in hush money later. That is very funny. Brian Dorkasaurus on Twitter says, wife and I can't attend the rally on June 8th in Des Moines, Iowa.

We'd love some more details on it, though. So look, we're going to try to give more details as we go along, but obviously the whole point of the rally will be revealed at the rally, and your physical participation is part of the point. I understand, of course, that a lot of people can't make it, but if you can have any chance at getting to Des Moines, t.com slash rally would be great. Yes, of course, we will live stream it. But one more thing, Brian added, any chance Bernie Sanders or Kyle Kalinsky will make an appearance

to help show support. I'd call that an aspiration.com slash tyt. Get it? A win, win. I got it, Brian. Nice job. Somebody watches old school. That's right.

You're the second person in recorded history to ever use that phrase. Is that the group you want to be in? Yes, his last name is Dorkosaurus, of course it is. True, huh? Okay, Brian, thank you for mentioning that. And you'd really do get a win-win at Aspiration.com slash 20. Anyway, no, Bernie and Kyle, I don't believe we're going to be there, but Ojetta and J.D. Shelton will be there, and so Alison Hartson.

And Thomas Shipman asked if Amarqon and Jarr is going to be there. But guys, we'll do more rallies, hopefully we'll get more and more folks involved. All right, we got to do more news for you guys. Okay, more news. I think you're going to like this one. Not the country, it's been, Jake. Okay, the Mueller report was released weeks ago, and we've still yet to hear anything directly from the man behind it, Robert Mueller.

And at this point, when it comes to his investigation, when it comes to his conclusions, there is no guarantee that we're ever going to find out what he actually thinks. And we're finding out a little bit more possibly about why he has been so hesitant to actually appear in public and speak about this. Two people familiar with the matter said that the Justice Department is deferring to Mueller, who would like for any discussions beyond the public contents of his report to be conducted in private, but another person said it is primarily the department rather than Mueller himself resisting a nationally televised hearing.

Representative Jerry Nadler has said he envisions himself correctly as a man of great rectitude and apolitical, and he doesn't want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle. And that is why some of the whispers leaking out are that he might want to testify, but it will be behind closed doors. Yeah, it's totally unacceptable. And so I haven't criticized Mueller before. Some people said, oh, he should have done this or that.

Well, look, he thinks the current sitting president can't be indicted. So he believes, and it is his genuine opinion, that that is why the Justice Department cannot act. He did say that Congress should take up the matter of obstruction of justice. which he laid out 10 different instances of that were very, very clear. So I didn't mind any of that. I did mind him thinking that his remit was so tiny that looking into Trump's business ties with the Russians would be outside of the scope. Well, then why do you think he obstructed justice?

So I think that he made a mistake there. But it's not because he has bad intent. We're not like the Republicans. We don't think like Mueller is like secretly this or secretly that. He doesn't have 18 angry Republicans working on the case, et cetera. It was an understandable decision, but one I think that did great damage because then you don't know what was motivating Trump. Okay, but now we have a very significant problem.

He's saying my reputation is more important than the American people finding out what Trump actually did, and that's unacceptable. So if he goes in front of TV cameras and testifies, it will be much more impactful because then people can see it with their own eyes. Now, for a couple of reasons. One, let's keep it real. Nobody read the Mueller report. A handful of people read it.

Every person who read it was like, oh my God, Mueller really thinks he's guilty. But it's 400-some-odd pages. There's like a discussion of whether the congresspeople read. Do you know how you have any idea how lazy congresspeople are? I'd be surprised. Like, Jamie Raskin, who's a congressman who did read the report. said he'd be surprised if 1% of Americans read the report. I'd be surprised if 1% of Congress read the report.

There's no way in the world, 1% of Americans, over 3 million people read over 400 pages of that report, no way, no way. And now the second giant problem with Mueller wanting to do it behind closed doors because, oh, he's too good for politics, and even though he's not being political, they're going to charge him with being political, and it's gonna be a spectacle, and he's just way too proper for spectacles, is if you do it behind closed doors, what's going to prevent the Republicans from lying about what you said again? Now for the third time, nothing.

So then we won't actually know what you said at all, and we'll be back to he said, she said, and you'll have clarified absolutely nothing. And that's really the problem. The problem isn't that nobody involved is saying anything. It's that people are saying stuff, just not Robert Mueller. William Barr, he's talking up a storm, and he has been for literally weeks, and has a demonstration of the issue. what Mueller could possibly fix if he were to talk is you said a few minutes ago that the only

reason that Mueller didn't indict the president is because of that Justice Department memo. But Barr says that was not the thing that was stopping Mueller from doing it. But is that true? Who knows? Robert Mueller hasn't said only William Barr, a guy who seems incredibly dishonest, and that's been well established in the way that he's communicated about the report before and after it being released. We have to take his word for it, I guess, at this point.

And we won't know until Robert Mueller finally testifies if that ever happens. And if it's on camera, not only will more people actually finally see it for the first time, but it's more impactful, it's more powerful. I know when I was on cable news, all the producers were obsessed with. Is it on video? Is it on video? If it's not on video, who cares? And so news shouldn't operate that way, but it often does operate that way.

And people often, unfortunately, operate that way. So he is being incredibly selfish here. Oh, please, I don't want my reputation at the country club to be impaired in any way, shape, or form. And what will my reputation be? Yeah, like, with all due respect, who cares? What's at stake here is, in a lot of ways, the republic. So one, are we going to have rule of law or not? Are you going to clarify what you said so that the American people have a sense of the

gravity of the crimes of the president? And then secondly, he's playing by old rules that don't exist now because of Donald Trump and he does not understand the gravity of the problem. So he thinks like what, I'm just doing what is normally done. Does it look like the Trump people are doing what's normally done? No, Barr lied about your report through and through, you thought he wouldn't. You're like, no, no, no, no, of course. The Attorney General will follow decorum.

And we know now because of Mueller's team saying, oh my God, they couldn't believe that he didn't tell what was actually in the report. Well then wakey, wakey, when are you gonna get it through your thick skull that Republicans are not like they used to be because Mueller's a Republican. And so Mueller probably thinks like, oh, Bob Dole would have never done that. Neither would Richard Lugar, where's decorum, right? Well, there is no decorum, it's gone, it's gone. One side says, Trump talked about people who cooperate with federal investigators that should

now be illegal. Remember when he said that? Called him rats. Yeah, he called him rats. And he said he shouldn't cooperate with law enforcement. You think that guy has any sense of what is right and wrong? Meanwhile, while you're going and playing by the Queensbury rules, he's destroying democracy. And when you lay down, you allow him to destroy democracy.

And you're doing it because of what you consider to be your beloved reputation. Well, it's not time for that. It's time for men of principle to act as patriots. And that is not what Mueller is doing right now. Yeah. And so we will continue to wait. And while we're waiting, we'll turn to one more story. Joe Biden's support for the 90s crime bill has opened him up to criticism not only from

the gigantic number of Democratic opponents he has in this primary process, especially those coming at him from the left, but also from Donald Trump, who over the past couple of days tweeted this, anyone associated with the 1994 crime bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you. I, on the other hand was responsible for criminal justice reform, which had tremendous support and helped fix the bad 1994 bill. Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 crime bill, that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American history, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No. Now, we are all slightly stupider for having listened to that, but that is

what the president is saying, and it might, it might signify nothing because he is a denizen of the Aos realms, but it might represent a possible strategy where he believes that if Biden is the opponent in the general election, then he can attack him from the left on criminal justice reform? Yeah, no, no, I think it's actually very telling because the country is so progressive that any time we get close to an election, even the most monstrous right wingers like Donald Trump will turn around and pretend to be more progressive than the Democratic candidate. He did it during the last election, he said that he was gonna drain.

the swamp and the corruption. Now that's a progressive position, Mitch McConnell and the others say no, money in politics and the corruption that comes along with it is fantastic. That's just good of old Americans talking to one another. Hey, here's the Koch brothers talking to me, giving me a million dollars. What a great conversation that was. So the Republican Party locked stock and barrel at the national level, loves that corruption. So Trump had to run to the left of them and say, oh, I'm against corruption, right?

Did he mean it? Of course not. health care coverage. Trump said, I'm going to cover everyone in the country. That's a Bernie Sanders-like position. I'm not even positive Elizabeth Warren is there at this point, right? But Trump pretended to be super left. He was against the wars, left.

Now, none of it is true, and he comes into office and we've ramped up some of the wars. We threatened a coup in Venezuela and halfway executed it. Luckily it's Trump, so he bungled it, right? Universal health care coverage, are you kidding me? He wanted to destroy the Affordable Care Act, then more people would be uninsured. It's all lies, but at least he had enough sense to lie because he knows the country is massively left wing. So meanwhile, knuckleheads like Biden are still going around, going, 94 crime bill, I'm super proud of it.

Yeah, wait, we locked up all those innocent people. It was great war on drugs, yes, right? No, you idiot, people don't like that. And so you were wrong on that, but you don't have the decency to admit it. Now, a lot of people voted for the 94 crime bill. We showed you a lot of clips last week. You should check out that video on t.y.t.com comparing Biden versus Bernie Sanders. They both voted for the crime bill, and the crime bill has two good parts.

It had significant gun control in there, which Biden still talks about, and he should, and the violence against women act, and that's the main reason that Bernie Sanders voted for it. But now Sanders regrets voting for it, because he says all the other parts, which he at the time, and we showed you the speech, railed against, and said this is going to be terrible for African Americans, and this is problematic, and we should take that out of the bill, we should just do the Violence Against Women Act and the gun control parts, et cetera. But overall, he thought those parts were so important that he wanted to vote again.

Biden, on the other hand, doesn't think anything was wrong with it. Even Bill Clinton, who was the president at the time and bragged about it. It was one of his signature piece of legislation says, we were wrong, we shouldn't have done it. So, one, Biden is now more right-wing than Trump on that issue, which is outrageous. So why would we vote for him on that? That's the presentation. Okay. If Donald Trump had been in a position of power, he would have enthusiastically supported

that bill. Of course, okay, now let's talk about the substance. It's just a lie. Yeah, well, so let's talk about the substance and the reality. The only reason why I'm hesitating, John, because I will give Trump credit for the criminal justice reform, because all I care about is policy. And on that, that was good policy. I know why they did it now because it's affecting white people because of opioid addiction.

I know that, but it's still the right thing to do. They're way late to it, but it's still the right thing to do. And so it's the only good thing he's done the entire presidency, but it is a good bill. And so Cory Booker, who worked on it on Democratic side, should get credit for it, but so should Trump. Now, is Trump really for criminal justice reform overall in his life? Hell no, is he for protecting African Americans preposterous. Now, we can give you dozens of examples, but the one that I've always been most animated by is the Central Park Five.

So back in decades ago when this happened, this was five kids who were arrested African American and Latino, a woman, a white woman was raped in Central Park, a banker, and the whole city was on fire over it justifiably. It was just horrible, right? Now Trump took out an ad though, to add fuel to the fire and saying, that's a full page ad in the New York Times saying bring back the death penalty, bring back our police. And he wanted those kids executed and they were kids. It turns out they didn't do it.

So he must have been just devastated. Oh yeah, yeah. So when they were exonerated, they found the guy who actually did do it, his DNA matched And he confessed. So there was absolutely no question, and those many, many years later, those guys who were children at the time when they were first arrested were let out. When Trump was asked about it, he said, they admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigations say they were guilty.

The fact that the case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous, and the woman so badly injured will never be the same. In other words, I don't care that they found the right guy. I think they're guilty anyway. Wait, why? Well, gee, I wonder what's different between the five black and Latino kids who were originally charged and the white guy who originally, who not only confessed, but you can get false confessions as there were in the Central Park Five. His DNA matched the DNA in the crime scene. There's no question it was the white guy who did the rape.

But Trump doesn't like that. He'd rather have it be the young African Americans who he wanted executed. So does Trump really believe in criminal justice reform on behalf of African Americans? That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard. Okay, we are out of time, folks. And you know what John Idera is good about? Staying within time. Trying.

Yeah, he tries. He tries hard. All right, we've got a lot more for you guys, including Megan McCain starting a fight with Klobuchar, of all people. I am going to be against both of them. So who's the winner? None of the above. I will explain in the next segment. And then there's a now a fight back against living while black, right? All the folks that are being turned in for doing mundane chores, there's a new case. Someone was accosted by the police for picking up trash from his lawn. Who would do that? Who would? Anyway, we'll save it for

the next hour and now but they're thinking of some cities are thinking of passing ordinances making that illegal so really really interesting stuff we'll do and john's going to come back for ask me anything that's in the third hour of the young turks so at five o'clock and don't forget that's five o'clock pacific and eight o'clock pacific we've got the kamala harristown hall john will be back for that as well you guys come right back for all those stories thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.