The Young Turks - Republicans Sabotaging America And Obliterating The Working Class

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Republicans are stripping Democrats of power. Michigan Republicans are making life as hard as they can for their voters. 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. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jane Cougar, John Iderola with you guys. Lots of stories to get to Republicans cheating in Wisconsin and Michigan. I'm full of venom on that, and I will be unleashing that in a little bit. And then we also have, of course, the giant news about Michael Flynn.

My friend John Iroll over here made a nice YouTube live video out of it yesterday when the news broke. I checked that out as well. But we're going to give you a lot more details right now. Although I did make a mistake in that video. The mistake was that I filmed it in front of my board game collection. So that's all anybody in the comments is talking about. Yes. Everybody's like, yeah, Michael Flynn.

Hey, Citadel's. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Donald Trump might be impeached. On the other hand, what board games are you playing, John? Tickets ride Europe, interesting choice, a little bit more complicated. Okay. Okay, so lots to get to, especially on Flynn. As usual, I'll have some thoughts on the details of that that I think are important.

Okay, and also time to celebrate a couple of different things. First of all, Amplify is going great. We've got some new media offerings for you guys. You guys can help sponsor The Intercept. So I was, as I mentioned yesterday, I thought someone had already gotten that, but they have not. And that would be great. It's at t.com slash amplify.

And you could also get C-SPAN, some Young Turks membership. By the way, Chris Cuomo reached out yesterday after I reached out to him and said that he appreciates the membership that you guys sent. So in fact, let me see if I can look at this. up real quick and find out who did that. Cromo should have had this ready. Here we go. Alex,

Warpment. So Alex, thank you for doing that. And Chris says thank you. So you could also get Senator Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Suza Sarandon, Jim Carrey is a wonderful progressive. Get them Young Turks membership and their staff as well. I think that Pelosi and Schumer staff would be particularly interesting targets to actually hear a progressive message for a change.

Have we done Fox & Friends yet? Ooh, we did Laura Ingram, Hannity, and Tucker Carlson. You get Fox and Friends, you get Trump. Wait a minute. Okay. We're going to have to think about that one. And of course, if you give under a thousand bucks, we give it to journalism students. So that also affects the media and amplifies the progressive message.

And if you give $150 or more, in any category, you get a Young Turks t-shirt that we designed specifically for this. I say we, but in fact, it was one of you guys, Jade Naper, who designed that. So please participate. And I'm trying to, oh, there it is. God, that looks beautiful. It's better in black, I think. That is a very striking black t-shirt. Yeah, it's, yeah, I love that in black, but, and black's better for overweight guys like me.

But that's actually as good as it gets in white, if you ask me. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, so last quick thing about that, while Anna's away I'm trying to catch her on the membership drive, not too great success so far, but help a brother out, if you're going to join, it's a good time to join. Actually for two reasons. One, t.com slash jank is a way to join, okay? But also because the holidays were doing a week free trial.

And yesterday I had, for example, the just Democrats on, and they, and they, you know, they, had an extraordinary post game where they explained how the group was formed, how they found Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was the one person that helped the most that no one knows about? What? That was super interesting. I don't know. Well, hello, free trial, t.yt.com slash holiday, okay, this is the time to do it, so you get seven weeks, seven days free. Check it out yesterday's post game was excellent.

And in today's post game, by the way, I'm gonna talk about Bernie Sanders, Gathers, at the Sanders Institute over the weekend, I went to Vermont, and all my rowdy progressive friends were there. And it was, if you're a progressive, it was Woodstock, it was Coachella, it was badass. Yeah, I was just busy. Yeah. Or whatever. Right, not invited.

But still, I'll tell you all about that in today's post game, again, either use the t. t.com slash holiday to check it out and sample it, or t.t.com slash jank to join, for example. I had to wash my hair. I was very busy. No, I know. John was very busy. They really, really wanted him there. I mean. I went to a different conference. It goes to a different high school. Okay. Mayor Bill de Blasio kept asking, where's Idaho? I came here for the Johnny Pie. I don't know where he is. Okay. Give it a couple years. Okay. Not yet. All right, let's do the Okay, I guess we can do that.

We've got a pair of stories to start off the show with where effectively in two different states, although close by, the Republicans have decided that they're done with this whole democracy thing. They've been looking at the trends, they know where this is going, it doesn't favor them. And so they're moving on into a different system. I don't know which, they'll find something. So let's start off in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, Republicans have passed a set of bills that effectively strip a number of different powers

away from the incoming new Democratic governor and attorney general. This is a story that we've been talking about for several weeks, both on this program and on the damage report. They were talking about doing this. Scott Walker, the current Republican governor, was very enthusiastic about this plan. Not enthusiastic about his governorship having lost power, but if it's going to be a Democrat, then he's totally fine with it. So if you haven't seen that previous reporting, let's talk about some of what was in this package.

One part would prohibit municipalities from allowing more than two weeks of early voting. They don't want you to vote, they're not fans of it, so they're barring those. Again, this is, I guess, a smaller version of state's rights, town rights, no, no. If your town wants a lot of early voting, no, they're banning you from doing that. But in particular about those two positions, other provisions would give the legislature full control of a state economic development agency, so the executive department being pushed out of that, block the governor's ability to write regulations and allow the legislature to hire its own lawyers to file lawsuits on behalf of the state.

So previously, that was something that the governor's office would do. That's what the state suing something actually means. But now they're like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't represent us. If you want to use your new power to expand Medicare inside of, or Medicaid, I should say, inside of the state, we're not going to allow you to do that. We're the ones who now have that power. And as long as we can hold on to our very carefully gerrymandered seats, you will never have control over that process.

Republicans hate democracy. And given this development, I think it's very fair to say. And it's not just by itself, so it's not just the Wisconsin Republicans. Michigan Republicans also doing similar measures that we're gonna talk to you about a little bit later in the program. And they also did in another states like North Carolina. So the minute that the voters, the voters decide to put the other party in charge, Republicans go, screw the voters, who cares what the voters want?

In fact, in South Dakota, there was ballot measures, and now again, there are ballot measures being challenged by Republicans all across the country that said, hey, we don't want our legislators to be corrupt, this was a couple of years ago. And the Republican-controlled legislature laughed and said, democracy, who cares how you voted? No, if you vote for ballot measures that we like, we say that's fine. If you vote for ballot measures we don't like, we kill them, so he just killed it. What's the point of a ballot measure? If the legislature can just come in and go, yeah, but I want to be corrupt.

I want to take gifts from lobbyists, I want to have them give me an unlimited amount of money. In South Dakota, they have the worst laws in the country on corruption. Montana had some of the best laws, South Dakota has the worst laws. And the politicians, particularly the Republicans, said, no, I like our corruption. I love the corruption. And I hate democracy. So you voted for Democrats, sad day for you. I'm gonna strip them with their powers.

And so that's what they're doing in Wisconsin. But of course, look, this is my ongoing beef with the mainstream media, because I am right and they are wrong, and I know that that bothers them, but they'll call it even. Well, I can't quite tell who likes democracy more. But wait a minute, the Republicans pretended that they cared so much about the will of the voters that they couldn't seat Merrick Garland for 14 months because they wanted another election to come so that the voters can decide who should be the Supreme Court nominee. Yeah.

In this case, well, the voters have decided, they just decided. Wasn't 14 months ago, it's not 14 months from now, they just voted right now. So they're will of the voters could not be more clear in Wisconsin. And what did the Republicans say? Just kidding, we hate democracy. The only thing we care about is power. So rest of the media, call it what it is, but you won't, you'll just, you will help the Republicans deceive the American people over and over again by acquies.

truth with lies, and you'll do it in this case too. It used to be Republicans versus Democrats, but now it's Republicans against democracy. And all of those of us who want to have some say need to come together. You gave an example of Mayor Garland where the Republicans, thanks to their ability to hold on to the Senate, which they only have because the way the Senate is created gives them a massive, massive benefit that these small conservative rural states are able to massively outnumber far larger states like California, obviously. And so if, you know, you vote in a Democratic president, screw them.

They are able to use this thing that's weighted in their favor to take control of the other branches or exert control over them. Here and in places like North Carolina, they've gerrymandered the legislature, so then the legislature just takes all the power to itself. In one state, they got a minority of the votes, but they maintained a super majority of the seats because they have so tightly and carefully gerrymandered it. They're viciously opposed to democracy. And they know, like, the rise of white nationalism, the rise of talking about immigrants,

you know, replacing us. Tucker Carlson talks every night about that. All of that is tied in with this. It is a fear that their numbers can't hold out. And they will gerrymander as long as they can. They will use tricks like that as long as they can. But they're worried that someday even that won't be able to let them maintain their control of power. You would think that they would change their positions.

They would try to actually appeal to people. And maybe someday we'll get to that. Maybe when the back of the Republican Party is broken in two, they will have to rethink things. But until then, just expect more Wisconsin's, more Michigan's, more North Carolinas. So Tony Ivers is the incoming Democratic governor. He was just elected. He'd been worried about this.

Now potentially might have to fight back. Let's go to a little bit of him being interviewed about this topic. It's a power grab, plain and simple? Certainly. And we had lots of people voting for us, voting in the last election, November 6th. We won, we won fair and square, we won on the issues, we won fully knowing what I'm about and what Scott Walker is about. I see this as essentially a Republican majority trying to repudiate and turn back the clock and turn back the clock. Okay, so he acknowledges what it is.

So what are they going to do going forward? How is he going to attempt to get his power back? Can these measures you think be reversed or do you think you're going to be stuck with it? them if they are passed? Well, given the rancor and the posturing that's going on now, I think it's going to be very, very difficult. The time to stop it is now. That's the bottom line.

Of course, we can try to reconstruct it during the budget or some other time. But the fact of the matter is, this is bad public policy, and it's telling the people in Wisconsin that their vote doesn't count. And clearly, I can't believe the Republican majority thinks that's a good idea. I like him, but if we had been doing a test run of that interview, we would have finished that and then I would said, okay, scrap all of that. We need to start from scratch because that is not how you message about this topic. Where is the urgency?

Where is the passion? Where is the defense of democracy? Yeah, here's what I would have said. Well, I plan to absolutely break the back of the Republican Party in Wisconsin in the next election. And I'm on here on CNN to tell every voter in Wisconsin that the Republican Party has great disdain for you, does not like democracy, just spit in your face. And so you're crazy if you vote for a Republican in Wisconsin because they will not abide

by the elections and they're un-American. So make sure that you vote against every Republican in Wisconsin. That is the correct strategy to take because that's also true and it allows you to fight back. Being polite, how's that working out for us? And for the media, who I say, oh, no, you guys are biased because you have facts and the other side doesn't. And so I, but I gotta call it even somehow. So then show me a blue state where the Democratic legislature has stripped a Republican

governor of its powers. Show me one. Show me one. You can't show me any. It is not even the Republicans do hate democracy. All they care about is their donor money and how they're gonna please their corporate donors And they'll destroy democracy to do it. And they're doing it right now in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina.

Yeah. Well, you mentioned Michigan. Why don't we move on to that? The Republican-led Michigan legislature just gutted a number of bills designed to benefit the working class as sort of the culmination of a month's long plan to circumvent the will of the voters. This is a little bit complicated, but bear with me. So not too long ago, activist Daniela Atkinson and about 400 or and a number of other activists got 400,000 signatures on a petition and an effort to get a minimum wage hike and paid sick leave on the state's November ballot.

So a number of different ballot measures that they wanted to get the people to vote on because they knew that people support these sorts of things. The Republicans didn't want that to happen. So they came up with a plan in advance of the election. To keep the provision off of the ballot, they approved legislation in September that looked similar to what these activists were pushing for. They wanted to raise this new bill that they had back then, would raise the minimum wage from $925 to $12 by 2022, and similarly hiked the tipped minimum wage $12 an hour by 2024, up from the current $3.52. And so that's what they did. But even back then, if you listened closely to them, you could tell that this was a point. plan that was not going to survive contact with the midterms.

So the midterms happened, the ballot measures weren't there, although other good ballot measures did pass. And as soon as you got past that time when the people could directly vote on these incredibly popular pro-worker bills, then the Republicans maintaining their majority decided, oh, okay, well, we dodged that bullet, and now we just get rid of most of the benefits from those bills. We said we would do it before the election, but now we're not going to do it, and there's nothing you can do for at least a couple of years. So both in terms of the minimum wage, the plan that they have now would effectively, it would raise it to about what the activist

had wanted, but almost a decade later, meaning that if inflation continues the way it is expected to now, you will see effectively no benefit for the next 15 or so years, 12 to 15 years. You also have another bill that would have exempted employers with fewer than 50 employees, oh, sorry, this is the new bill, would exempt employers from fewer than 50 employees from having to provide paid sick time as required under existing law. So a ballot measure would have enshrined the need for sick leave to be provided, no matter the size of these industries, they dodge that bullet as well. So minimum wage, tip minimum wage, sick leave, all of these things.

People trusted the Republican Party, and they got knifed in the back for it. Yeah, so let me be clear. The Republican Party hates the average American worker. They have this lie that they've been doing for four decades now called trickle down economics. And the idea is we give giant tax cuts and subsidies and all the breaks to the rich and to corporations. And eventually it trickles down on you. Here's the problem.

It hasn't. For 40 years, wages have been stagnant as corporate profits have soared and the top 1% wealth has grown exponentially. It was always a lie. It is factually a lie. It is in arguable. Then to rub it in, they're going to states like Michigan and go, oh, you want to actually raise the wages of the American worker?

Hell to the no. No way. We will fight that with every fiber of our being, including coming out with fake laws, which we then repeal after elections, to make sure you can't even get it on a ballot. Because we know we'd lose a ballot measure. We lost it in Missouri. We lost in Arkansas. So we lose everywhere.

You know why? Because people want higher wages. But we will not allow higher wages. We are the Republican Party. That is a fact. It's an absolute fact. But again, the media will aid an event Republican lies by calling it even. Well, I don't know who's for the higher wages.

It could be the Republicans that vote against higher wages every single time. Or it could be Democrats who vote in favor of higher wages. And by the way, you want to want to call out corporate Democrats, establishment Democrats, that also don't want to increase minimum wage or any other wage? Great, do that. All I care about is the facts, okay? So I don't care about the Democratic Party, but the reality is some in the Democratic Party fight for higher wages.

No one in the Republican Party fights for higher wages, and their excuses, no, trickle down economics. I give it all to the rich, and maybe after five decades, it might trickle down on you, but I will try to prevent it with every fiber of my being. That's a fact. It's a fact, you report it, nope, I'm gonna call it even. So that leads me to Missouri, back to Missouri and Arkansas.

They do ballot measures. In Missouri, they want to increase the minimum wage from $7.85 to $12 that was in this recent election. And does it pass? I mean, Missouri's a red state. Claire McCaskill lost. They voted for Republicans. It's not gonna pass, right?

Wrong, it passes easily, 62%. Arkansas is an even more red state. They want to increase the minimum wage from $8,0.50 to $11. In fact, it would go into effect immediately for some portion of a $9.25 in January. Well, Arkansas is super red, that's not gonna pass, right? Wrong, passed easily, overwhelmingly. 68% more than two-thirds of the people in Arkansas. So why did they vote to increase their wages, but at the same time, vote for the party

that tries to make sure that their wages are lower, the Republican Party. Because the media lied to them and told them that it's easy. told them that it's even, oh, I can't tell Republicans or Democrats, who wants higher wages? Well, your lies aided and abetted the corruption of the Republican Party. That's why the people of Missouri and Arkansas was like, I can't tell those for higher wage. I know I want higher wages, but I can't tell because the media consistently and deliberately lies to you. And part of it is, well, gee, who also wants lower wages?

Oh, right, giant corporations. Who is the mainstream media? giant corporations. Isn't that funny? I mean, look at how brutal the Michigan laws. So, of course, they want to crush your wages. That's well established. And look, John read you the facts.

If you don't believe us, Google it. Look it up. Go anywhere you like and find out the real facts. See, we're open to facts, unlike the Republicans who try to do propaganda for you. Okay, so, but look at the paid sick leave part. Employer can say, if you want to take sick leave, you have to give me a weak notice. What kind of a joke is that? It's literally a sick joke.

How the hell do you know if you're going to get the flu a week before you get it? It's a way of saying, I don't care, I don't care if you're on your deathbed. You show up to work or I don't pay you or I fire you. And the Republican court goes, yes, crushed the American worker, crush them, right? And the media goes, I can't tell, I can't tell, who's in favor of it? Well, God damn it, who just voted to take away paid sick leave? You know, they say, oh, also in this new legislation by the Republicans, if you're going on vacation, let's say you've got two weeks of vacation, well, that counts as sick days.

No, that's not a sick day. A sick day is when you get sick, right? But that proposal itself is sick. Yeah. So maybe a little bit. So I guess the rest of the media is never, ever going to be honest with you, so we'll do it. The Republican Party hates the average American worker, and will fight to make sure you have lower wages. And that is, and they have won over the last 40 years.

That's why your wages have not gone up at all as your productivity has skyrocketed. And they took all of your work, all of your hard work, and they put it in the pockets of corporate executives. That's what the Republican Party stands for. There's actually one more sick wrinkle to this. So we were talking in our last story about how much they hate democracy. And so they played some tricks, obviously. But you might think, okay, well, those things didn't make it into ballot measures.

But what about the ones that did? I mean, you said that some actually passed. And yeah, some did pass, and they were good. There was actually one called the Promote the Vote Ballot Proposal to make it easier for people to register and to vote in that state. They're coming after that, too. So a set of bills sponsored by state Senate majority floor leader Mike Kowal would fundamentally alter that ballot proposal, allowing same-day voter registration up to an including election

day the way it should be. Instead, that deadline would be pushed back to up to 14 days before the election. Provision in the ballot measure allowing for automatic voter registration would also be altered to allow people to opt out. This, in addition to the ones you were talking about, passed 67 to 33. But it makes it easy to vote, and they can't have that. They can't abide it. And I mentioned this on the damage report today.

I just think it's amazing that they can pass something. The only point of pushing the deadline back is to make it some people can't vote. There's no trickle down voter registration. There's no mythology crafted around it. It is blatantly anti-democratic, and they can do it. And there are no consequences for them doing it. Yeah, so to reiterate, they also hate democracy. And so there's two examples of that in Michigan, but John just gave you one.

And it's not like the Michigan voters were unclear, 67 to 33, couldn't be clearer, yes, we would like people to vote. The Republicans say, I don't care, oh, you voted for that. It's funny, because I already told you I hate democracy. So I'm gonna try to kill your ballot measure, which was pro-democracy, and I'm gonna do it in an anti-democratic way. Isn't that funny? Okay, second of all, they ended gerrymandering, political gerrymandering in Michigan in another

ballot measure. Katie Fahey, voters, not politicians, wonderful group, wonderful organizer. They did amazing work, and they won as well, 61%, okay? And then the Republicans are like ending gerrymandering, well then the majority would get to rule. And then we would have to live under a democracy where obviously our loser ideas can't possibly win. Well, how will the corporations rig it? No, no, no, no, no, no. So what are they doing?

They're trying to water that down as well. Why? Because they hate democracy. They hate it. They hate it. If they think they could win, great. But they know that in their heart of hearts that they are losers. And then if you actually have a majority rule, they will lose forever.

So they're like, I don't know, my corporate donors gave me this money to crush the workers and to destroy democracy. So they're going to do everything they can. Look, as you can tell, I'm pretty clear about my opinions of the Republican Party. They are the worst of the worst. I'm pretty clear about my point of view on mainstream media. But now let's move to the Democrats for one quick point. Hey, you guys want to ever get up and fight?

So, look, you want all these seats, you want all these positions in Wisconsin and Michigan. Why does it take me to attack the Republican Party in a way that is factual and warranted? Why isn't anyone from the Democratic Party breathing fire on television today? Why aren't they coming out and saying these things? Well, oh, but that would offend Republican voters. I don't know if you know this, they're on the other side, they voted against you, okay? That doesn't mean that if they win that you don't respect democracy, that would be the opposite of the point we're making.

But it does mean you should make your own case, you idiots. If you don't make your own case, it makes it easier for the mainstream media to go, well, I can't tell. One side's super strong and says democracy sucks, and everybody should be paid less. Another side says nothing. So maybe I won't even call it even, I'll just say, I'll just give the Republican point of view and I'll be done with it. And that is the state of America today.

On Wisconsin, Randy Bryce has been really good in drawing attention to that, being involved in the protests and all that. Yeah, Iron Stash has been absolutely wonderful. He lost his election, but that didn't stop him at all. He didn't go back and sulk. He didn't go walking in the woods. Unlike Obama, he put his walking boots on and got right back into the fight and said, not on our watch.

So at least there's somebody fighting for you. Yeah. What was here at first break? Apparently, yes. When we come back, we have Flynn, wonderful disaster ahead for Donald Trump, can't wait. All right, back on a young Turks, Jank and John with you guys. Brian from the member section writes, and sadly it's not just Republicans in red states. I'm in a union in California and I get paid, no paid vacation or sick leave.

Man, it just, Jesus, man. is, for the average worker, it's absolutely crushing out there. 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 wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR,

The host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn 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. You know, I was talking to, this is the kind of thing we normally talk about in the post game, but real quick, I was talking to somebody from Germany the other day, a businessman. Now, he's well off, and he's a complete capitalist, and he's like, wow, you Americans are

just brutal to your workers, brutal, and that's totally right, unfortunately. I am sock, writes in, I'm in a poorer red Michigan district, and nobody even knows that this happened. Okay, and that's also unsurprising. Unprecedented madness says, unfortunately, people will continue to only vote for their party. Unless the media does their job and reports the facts, there is little hope. Kim writes in, the DNC stands for Do Not Confront. Unfortunately, also true. Last one from the member section, Crash 83K says, can we start a crowdfunding campaign to get TYT to do exit?

polling for the 2020 primaries, TYT managed, publicly funded. What do you think? That would cost millions of dollars. That's going to be difficult. Yeah, it's probably a bridge too far, brother. I appreciate you offering, but we asked too much of you guys already. And you guys have done wonderful things, like get people like Accio-Cortez elected and the just Democrats elected and you do membership, et cetera.

But that would cost millions. And I don't think that that's our wheelhouse. But, hey, man. 2024. Yeah. Hey, you never know, man, but we gotta spread the word. Okay. So speaking of which, I'm gonna give shout outs to the folks who just gave to the Amplify

program, which amplifies a progressive message and helps the show. Diane Ranieri from Pittsburgh, that's awesome, 150 bucks, you're getting a t-shirt. Steven Buchanan from Oakland, also 150 bucks, also a t-shirt. Mark Grasso from San Francisco. Philip Kanzano from, and I didn't know this, Beddow Country, Texas. Oh, I thought it was Beto County. I was like, it's really a county in Texas named Beto? God, he is popular.

That seems incredible. Is there also one named Ted? Okay. Anyway, from Beto Country, Texas. Thank you, Philip. Also $150. The journalism students that you just got a membership to, also thank you guys, and you get a t-shirt as well.

T.y.t.com slash Amplify. All right. John, what's next? All right. Just a little story for you. Special counsel Robert Mueller has released his sentencing guideline memo for Mike Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about a year ago. The most important thing coming out of the sentencing memo is what he thinks the sentence should be.

And he's pretty clear. The special counsel praised Flynn's assistance to their investigations as substantial, writing that a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration for him would be appropriate and warranted. So he's effectively saying that it would be perfectly fine for the judge to sentence him to no time whatsoever, which I don't think people were necessarily expecting. And he could have spent quite a bit of time in jail, actually. The crime of giving false statements to the FBI carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of a quarter million dollars. Though federal sentencing guidelines call for Flynn to face much less between zero and six months in prison and a fine of up to $9,500. dollars. Mueller, in that same section of the memo, cited Flynn's exemplary career in the military

and public service when recommending a sentence at the low end of the guidelines range. So effectively, if the judge listens to Mueller, and there's some reason to believe that he will or she will, Flynn might not spend any time in prison. Now, to the assistance, what form did that assistance come in? Well, Mueller said that he sat over the course of about a year and a half for 19 different interviews with Mueller or someone of the team, and also said his early cooperation was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and first-hand insight regarding events and issues under investigation by the SCO, and sort of related that his cooperation might actually have led others to cooperate with the investigation

who might not have otherwise done so. Yes. So that's the top level stuff. We do have some interesting tidbits, things that are. in the memo, things that are technically in but are blacked out that we can get to, but that's the top line. Yeah, so let's talk about the most relevant parts and how much trouble Donald Trump is in. So partly the answer is a lot, and the other part of the answer is we don't know, because

it's blacked out. Okay, so three parts, one is his cooperation with the special counsel, so that seems fairly straightforward, and that's not good news for Donald Trump. So the other one is another criminal investigation, super interesting, but it's redacted, right? Why don't we bring up the next graphic while you talk through this so people can see the section they're referring to? Yeah. And yeah, the relevant parts totally blacked out.

Okay. And then the third is an investigation so secret, they won't tell you anything about it. They won't tell you if it's criminal, federal, state, what it's about? Criminal, civil, having to do with something outside of the country, having to do it Inside? Is it about his work with Turkey? Is it about Ukraine? Is it something purely domestic?

We have no idea. By the way, that's real. That graphic is real. That's actually real. Okay, that is their paragraph on what the third investigation is about. In other words, we do not want you to know. This is the most amazing thing because you see that second investigation they give you all the details on it, or at least identifying it.

In the first, they do redact the specifics, but they at least let you know it's a criminal investigation, what would it take for the third to be fully redacted, where they don't want you to even know the nature of that investigation? I mean, it could be referencing one that we are familiar with, that they don't want to identify as having a relation to Mike Flynn, or it could be something totally new. So if it was just about the Russian interaction, well, that's the heart of the matter, and hence it would be bad enough without the two surprises that are in there. So what's the message that's being sent here?

Partly that Flynn's case has just gone through the courts and this is when his sentencing is up. But partly Mueller is sending two different messages. One is, oh, I don't want to tell you what my other cards are yet, but I've definitely got a couple of bases up my sleeve. I don't think you redact a deuce or I got a force space, don't show anybody, okay? And then the second thing he's doing though is since Trump is going around. saying, hey, I might pardon people.

I could pardon a Manafort. That's definitely on the table. I could pardon people. This is Mueller, in essence, saying, look, I'm suggesting no prison time for people who cooperate. In other filings, he has said, you should throw the book at him. Whether it's Papadopoulos, where he had a, his infraction was really minor, and he's in prison now for 14 days, right?

But even so, Mueller was like, this guy's a bad guy and he did not cooperate in the way that he said he was going to. He gave media interviews in a way that was totally on sanction. You just throw the book at him. On Manafort, they are absolutely scathing. So Mueller and Trump to some degree are playing a game here, who has more power? And Mueller's like, I can let you out of prison too, or a lot of times I can hand you off to state level where you cannot be. pardoned by Donald Trump.

So that's part of the undertone here in terms of what's going on. Now in terms of the actual special counsel one, so what did Flynn do? So he had interactions with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, and then he lied about it, and that's the crime. But what was the interactions about? So that's very important. So there's two lies, one he talked about, he did not mention that they had a conversation about how Flynn, before he came into office as the head of the National Security Council,

asked the Russians to vote with Israel on a United Nations Security Council vote. That's not going to send anyone to prison, okay? Oh, an American official was secretly helping Israel. Breaking news, that you'd have to lock up all of Washington, okay? The second one, though, was a discussion about lifting the sanctions. on Russian oligarchs, yeah, we have a winner. So that's the deal. Now the question is, did Flynn tell them?

I mean, they say throughout this document, incredible cooperation, talk to us about who else on the transition team knew that he was talking to the Russians and authorized it. Gee, I wonder who that could be. So did Trump tell Flynn to tell the Russians, don't worry, we're gonna lift the sanctions. We don't know yet, it's redacted, right? But Mueller seems incredibly pleased with the information that Flynn gave him. So, and of course, the degree to which it's specific is very important, and I can't prejudge it. But that's one of the mother loads.

Yeah, I just want to briefly mention, too, because I know some people who don't necessarily follow this much, might not know exactly why a lie of this sort is important, whether it's Mike Flynn lying to the FBI during that investigation or Donald Trump lying about business ties in foreign countries or things like that. Like, why is that a big deal? Well, obviously lying to the FBI is literally a crime. It's been a crime for a very long time. But the issue with those sorts of lies is once you put it out there and you say that one, you know, depiction of reality is true, if you are talking with someone in a foreign country

and you lie, the FBI doesn't immediately know that you lied to them. But that foreign power does know. And that theoretically gives them leverage over you, whether you're Mike. Flynn or Donald Trump. If your depiction of reality is false, the FBI and potential investigators don't know about it, but a foreign power or some other intelligence service does know about it, and there is a threat of jail time if it were to come out, then that can be used to influence you, either directly related to the thing you were talking about or potentially something completely unrelated. That's the purpose of a lot of intelligence work is to get that sort

of influence, and it seemed like the inner circle of Donald Trump was willingly just throwing it out all over the place. Yeah, one of my favorite parts is a quote in this document that says, Flynn, quote, also provided useful information concerning dot, dot, dot, dot. And then it doesn't tell you the rest. They ran out of characters that tweet. So, look, we're getting closer and closer to the moment when Mueller finally shows his hand and goes, this is what I got.

And then things will not be redacted. Well, to someone, they won't be redacted. It is entirely possible that we won't know. I mean, Whitaker, it seems, was put in to make sure that as little of his findings actually ever make it public possible. Yeah, not buying it. There's no way that he stays permanently redacted. So they will-A-1-Democratic House can subpoena it.

It'll go out in court records. If Mueller actually gets to publish it, even if he doesn't, it can be leaked, et cetera. They're not going to be like, oh, it turns out Trump's owned by the Russians. Oh, Whitaker fired me. Never mind, just burn the report. I don't know, he's a pretty savvy guy. Okay, I don't think that's how it's going to work. Okay.

By the way, Flynn is now the fourth to be sentenced in connection with this investigation, and there have been over 50 indictments. So sometimes we go to Trump rallies and Trump supporters say, well, they didn't. Didn't get anybody, so what are they wasting their time for? Fifty indictments, four sentences, yeah, they got people already, let alone what's in the redacted part and what they're going to do about Trump. I want to leave you on this note on this issue, though. I do remember Michael Flynn saying something about being tough on criminals and people who might

have abused their power, and I wonder if the court should take this thing into account as they consider as sentencing. Let's take a look. We do not need a reckless president who believes she is above the law. Lock her up. Yes, that's right, lock her up. I'm going to tell you what, it's unbelievable.

It is unbelievable. I know the special counsel does not want them to go to prison, but if they did, that would have been compelling to play during sentencing. Want to take a short break? Yeah, let's do it. We actually, in this next block, you were talking earlier about trickle-down economics and the lies sort of underlying that. Donald Trump apparently honest for once about something connected to that.

And Ocasio-Cortez does it again. Bold proposal, shaking Washington, as my sister called it, giving us life. Okay, so get the whole show at t-y-t.com slash join. We'll be right back. 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 yt dot com slash join today in the meantime enjoy this free say all right back on the young turks uh so i forgot to tell you this guy said so kind of kind of a big

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Not saying anything. I'm just saying, 10 billion views. Damn. All right, let's do it. So that's 10 billion lifetime views, and that's YouTube, Facebook, and all the platforms that we are on. And thank you guys. I mean, God bless your heart. We keep going up.

Obviously, you know, you've seen a lot of these videos, the 1 billion views, 2 billion, 5 billion, 7.6 billion, that's the number of people on the planet, now 10 billion. I had a knucklehead conservative today on social media, but like, how's that possible? It's more people to know on the planet. Yes, people can watch two videos or maybe even more. Okay, so- That person might pop up in our QAnon story at the end of the second hour. Okay, now, back to today, Bishop Bader from Richmond, Virginia, giving to t-y-t.com slash amplify, $150 bucks, you get a t-shirt, thank you, Bishop, appreciate it.

We'll give you two quick comments here from the member section. Colman says, Jake, you should play the Hulk in the next Marvel movie. Love the anger at the corruption, more people should be mad. We won't be able to be mad when our world is destroyed. Yeah, man, that Bernie Sanders Town Hall, as with all of us. of them, just when you see the depth of the problems, it gets, you know, it gets worse and worse. And so on climate change, we gotta go, we gotta go right now, right? We gotta start fixing it right now.

And no matter whether it's Trump or not, we're doomed for the next two years. At a minimum for two years, we're gonna go in the opposite direction. We did not have this time to waste. We didn't, okay, anyway, left, but thank you for the Hulk comment. I appreciate it. As it turns out, though, the guy who plays the Hulk is also a huge progressive. Mark Ruffalo is a wonderful progressive. And in particular, on that topic.

That's right. That's right. He ain't green for nothing. How do you think we got the 10 billion views? His secret is he's always concerned about carbon emissions. You would want to see this planet angry. That unfortunately is true. Okay, left-click commandos says, and just think about what

Flynn got to walk from. This is a great point. He was literally acting as a Turkish agent and conspired to kidnap an American and deliver him to Turkey. The insane value of the information he divulge must be explosively valuable to let Flynn walk. I both love and hate when you guys make better points than me. I love it. I love it because you are our members and we do the show together and you're the

young Turks and thank you for adding to the show. I hated that I forgot to make that point. So, in this case, not even forgot. It was like rolling around in the back of my head and I never crystallized it. So thank you for doing that for everybody watching the show. Don't get too mad, though. I did make a reference to that third case possibly being about Turkey. That's what I was talking about.

No, I hear you, but not good enough. Left-click commandos did one better. Remember, man, kidnapping someone and delivering them to a foreign country is insane and wildly illegal. That's not a small zero to six month sentence, right? And they let him off on that too. Great point, man, that must be good information. What I'm racking my mind about is, what could Flynn know that's valuable enough? Because he doesn't know Trump from the past, so it's not gonna, it would be really surprising

if he knew anything about, like so Michael Cohen could have a lot more dirt on Trump than Flynn. But maybe he knows very specifically, Trump ordered me to talk to. to the Russians about lifting the sanctions. That's the only thing I can imagine that it's valuable enough to get this outcome. And he's well placed for that, both in recent history and also throughout his career. He has international contacts. We know he travels there and all that. All right, excellent.

All right, guys, let's keep it going. Okay, this is a good one. Donald Trump is currently presiding over a massive rise in the national debt, but he's probably not going to be that worried about it. And wait until you find out why. This is reporting coming from The Daily Beast saying that in early 2017, when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a hockey stick spike in the national debt in the not too distant future, he responded, yeah, but I won't be here,

according to a source who was in the room when he made that comment. So they're trying to drill into his head, you moron, your policies are going to raise the national debt, which you and conservatives always say you're against. And he's like, yeah, I eat a filet of fish every night in bed. I'm out of here in two to eight years. Yeah, look, I actually think that that quote is perfectly emblematic of Donald Trump, not just on this issue, but on everything. He's like, what's in it for me?

Hey, I want to pump up the economy now. If it crashes later, who cares? I won't be here. You know, I'm going to do these tariffs and they could be potentially disastrous in the future. Who cares? I won't be here. The debt, we were always lying, and certainly Trump was lying. He's like, what's in it for me?

If it explodes on your head, I mean, think about how callous that is. If it ruins America later, who cares? I won't be here. I'm not here to represent you Americans, Donald Trump is saying in that quote. I'm here to represent myself, enrich myself, and you have a good legacy, etc. later, and by the way, look at, and that's why I say it's emblematic of him across the board, look at his business dealings. What would he do?

He'd borrow a ton of money, and then he'd go bankrupt, and then he'd tell people, sorry, I'm not going to pay you. And so same kind of idea. You give me the money now, later, when you need the money back, I won't be there for you. Sad day for you, I'm not going to pay you back. What's in it for me, it's all about me, me, me. This is not, if he's running a business, I still think that's an abhorrent way of thinking, but that's up to him and the people who do business with him, right?

But if he's the president of the United States, he's supposed to represent you guys, not himself. And that idea is laughable for Trump. Represent you guys, no, all about me. Yeah, and I think this is not often talked about enough component of conservative political ideology. You can see it in climate change, obviously. All of those people in the Senate that are against doing something like climate change have five to 15 years left to live, and that's it. So they'll see some of the terrible effects as extreme weather events become

more common, but then they'll be gone, and they don't care. And philosophically, we know that they don't look to the future. Conservatives look to the past, an imagined past, a fictional past, but always looking backward. Progressives look to the future. We imagine what we can accomplish, what world we can build. I don't want there to be climate change, not just because it's going to wreck my life, but because in 300 years I want my great, great, great grandkids to be serving on the USS Enterprise. Like we actually think about this idyllic world that we would like to create, and we're willing to do something about it now.

We live in the now so that people can live in the future someday. You know, John, I gotta do something rare here and give you credit. That's a great way of framing it that I hadn't really crystallized either until now. that progressives look to the future and conservatives look to the past. By definition, they believe in tradition, heritage, and maintaining the past. That's why they're conservative. They don't want things to change. So which party are you in favor of, the one that wants to plan for the future or the one

that wants to cling on to the past, which is impossible anyway? It's a no-brainer. I know they're ascendant now because of money in politics and corruption, et cetera. But conservatives are consigned to history to always lose. They are, because you can't stop change. So they're forever going to be losers. And Donald Trump is a good example of that, because all he ever does is losing business. And now, unfortunately, he's losing on your behalf as president.

I am getting a little tired of losing on the country and for the planet under Trump. But I wanted to point out one other thing. So one article on this was from The Daily Beast, Lachlan Markey and Aswan Soup sang writing here. And look, credit, the facts are right, everything is right. But unfortunately, and I just signaled them out, but it's really not on them. Everyone in the press does this. But in this case, I'm quoting them, they said this episode illustrates the extent of the

president's ambivalence sort of tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama. But guys, that's just not true. If you said it is an issue that the Republicans said they care about since Reagan, that's fair. But they have never balanced budgets. Reagan created a giant deficit, George W. Bush created an even bigger deficit. If you want to give credit as I have to George H.W. Bush for at least raising taxes

and limiting the damage that was done to the deficit and to the debt, that's fair, okay. He didn't balance the budget either, Bill Clinton did. cut the deficit in half, Trump has now exploded it. So since Reagan, the Republicans in action, indeed, have never cared about the deficit. It's a giant lie. So yet, you're blaming Trump for this and you should. But the reality is he's just so unsophisticated that he's accidentally honest about what the intentions of the entire Republican Party is. They're like, Yeah, we cut taxes and destroy the debt when we're in charge. And then we blame the Democrats afterwards.

He's like, I don't get it. And generally speaking, he's right. That is exactly what Republicans do. And he is no different than them. Bush's tax cuts were worse. They were significantly larger. It's just that even Bush had enough sense not to say it out loud. Okay.

We take another break? Yeah, probably the break between the hours. Come back. We've got Deval Patrick and also Alexandria Ocasico Cortez. Yeah, so the Deval Patrick story is really instructive. Great piece of journalism. I want to give a shout out on that when we come back to. But basically, journalism that made a difference.

Deval Patrick was going to run for president. We're going to give you an update on what happened on that when we come back. And it was because ladies and gentlemen, they got him. So he was Democratic governor of Massachusetts, but did we really live up to progressive ideals? fascinating story we'll do that when we return thanks for listening to the full episode of the young Turks support our work listen ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon