The Young Turks - Right Wing Warfare

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Israeli anti-government protests hit new heights as 200,000 march in Tel Aviv. Inside the panic at Fox News after the 2020 election. Trump calls US democracy a 'Very Dangerous System' at CPAC. CPAC crowd stands and cheers as Steve Bannon vows to bring down Fox News. Pro-Trump bots swarm DeSantis and Haley. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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. Woo! It's up! All right. Slight good news, but through it all, you got us and we'll steer the ship through all that news for you guys, get you the right place. Most important thing is truth, which Fox News

needs to apparently learn to think or two about. Okay, we'll talk about that a little bit later as well as MSNBC. By the way, viewers, I noticed you guys commenting on my sound effects in the background. They've equated me to like the news version of like a P. Diddy or, you know how they do the hype noises in the background? Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Preaching. All right. I do the same thing. I don't know. You do that a lot.

Yeah. Okay, so the silliness has begun already, but now, of course, turning to disaster. Well, why don't we begin with some international news? Israel spiraling out of control with inner turmoil. Violent protests erupting of Israelis on their own government. The unprecedented demonstrations reaching a breaking point. The rare uprising blocking roads and disrupting trains, clashing with police who fired stun grenades and water cannons.

As many as 200,000 protesters gathered in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv over the weekend to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal which would weaken the judicial branch in Israel, in particular the Supreme Court in Israel. Now at issue is Netanyahu's plan to allow the Knesset to overrule the Supreme Court with a simple majority. Now this would of course prevent the Supreme Court from being able to strike down laws or at least some laws that they have deemed unconstitutional. Now the protests have been taking place. ever since he made this proposal, but this past weekend, the crowds just really exploded. And if you take a look at this photo that was tweeted out, you can see just how large the crowd

is. According to the poster, an incredible photo. Downtown Tel Aviv is flooded with Israelis protesting the government's judicial reform package. And you also have some of the protesters, of course, speaking to the press, one of whom was a high school teacher who says this. There's a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship. We came here to demonstrate over and over again until we win. Now, while the protest started off as peaceful, things unfortunately did turn violent at certain points. Take a look at the video. Protesters here, they're chanting democracy right now, are warning that if this law goes through,

it is a potentially fatal blow to Israel's democracy. They say it would center a dangerous amount of power in the hands of paramissor Benjamin Netanyahu, who Alex, of course, is on trial as we speak for criminal corruption charges. Many of the protesters here believe that ultimately this law is about trying, Netanyahu trying to get out from underneath these criminal charges that he's facing. Now, the prime minister, of course, strongly denies that. He says these laws are necessary reforms to curb what he says are activist judges standing in the way of Israel's democratically elected government. Okay, so I love these protests in Israel. Go Israeli citizens. Please protect your democracy. And then we can get on to other matters as well. But unfortunately, this type of authoritarian, creeping authoritarianism is happening all across the world.

Now look, it got turned back in some places like in Brazil. Alula's back. Bolsonaro is out. Let's hope that we can keep that going. Here, you know, the corporate rule is back instead of Trump. It's better than Trump, but not very good. But whichever authoritarianism we have, and corporate rule here in America is some version of authoritarianism, it just keeps, that slow keeps on sliding. And it always ends with a completely authoritarian government.

government. Because the more power that they take, the more they get corrupted, and the more power they have to take. And at the end, they can't let anybody else weigh in. Otherwise, they'll get caught. It's true of Erdogan in Turkey. It's true of Putin and Russia. It's true of Netanyahu in Israel. And now there's the Israeli citizens rising up and saying, no, we don't want you to be above the law. But now let's also be clear, there are a lot of Israeli citizens and U.S. citizens and those other countries that I mentioned that do want their right wing leader to be above the law. And they want them to be able to break the law and protect their faction. And in Israel, there's two different their factions, right? Then there's the right wing faction and

the religious fundamentalists, etc. That's one group that's within Israel. And of course, the other faction is just Israel versus the Palestinians. And basically, so far, the Israeli citizens have said many, many times, no, we like Netanyahu's version of brutality, but now when it's turned against their own citizens, they like it a little less. Yeah, and just to comment on what you referred to in regard to other countries that also have a faction of voters or citizens who want to protect their leader, I mean, we certainly have that here in the United States, right? It didn't matter what Trump would be accused of. It didn't matter what kind of Evidence was presented to show that he was in fact guilty of what he has been accused of.

His supporters stood by his side no matter what. And for anyone who has that kind of ideology, I would just ask you to think about the consequences or what you would feel if the shoe were on the other foot or if the politicians you do not prefer took advantage of that type of authoritarianism essentially. Yeah, they would despise it. And I think that it was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity, except, look, I hate to say it, but in my experience, right wing voters all across the world, do not care about hypocrisy at all, 0%.

If you said to them, show on the other foot, they'd be like, well, it isn't on the other foot. In fact, I took it off and I beat you with it. And I love that I beat you with it. So I don't think religious fundamentalist voters in Israel, which is a huge part of the problem, or in America, or in Russia or in Turkey, are going to all of a sudden turn around Oh my God, you're right. How about my fellow man, right?

No, they're going to go fundamentalism. Beat them before they beat us. You know, the other thing to mention is that while these protests are huge, Netanyahu did win the election with a landslide. So there's a huge portion of the electorate in Israel that favors him. Now, I don't know if any of them have changed their mind about Netanyahu after he proposed to weaken the Supreme Court in Israel. But I do want to give you some more details about what happened over the weekend.

So I had earlier mentioned that, you know, it was mostly peaceful, but in certain moments, things did get a little violent. Footage released by police later showed protesters breaking down barriers in Tel Aviv and igniting fires as they blocked roads. Police sprayed water cannons at the protesters. Some protesters found out where Netanyahu's wife was. Apparently she was getting her hair done and they just decided to target her. So we have a little bit of video on that as well.

Let's take a look. Some chanting in Hebrew, quote, The country is burning and Sarah is getting a haircut. Israeli media said police were called to her aid and she was removed from the scene unharmed. Her husband later tweeting, The anarchy must stop. It can cost lives.

And the protests even extended to outside their home in Jerusalem. That demonstrator, alluding to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, where violence is the worst in 20 years, according to the Palestinian health ministry. So I wanted to just quickly make a reference to Huara, which was mentioned in that video, because Netanyahu, in regard to what happened to his wife, compared what happened to his wife to the village of Huara, which was burnt, or fires were set there by vigilantes, Israeli vigilantes. I'll get to more details about that in just a moment.

But he actually received a lot of backlash for making that comparison and he walked it back afterward. But I think that's important context to bring up. So look, what happened with his wife is, if I'm being honest, is like nearly perfect. Why? Because she was not hurt. She was not in danger of getting hurt. I hope she wasn't. Then that would make it very imperfect.

What they did was they gathered outside and they yelled shame, shame to someone who benefited from Netanyahu's corruption and who is part of the team that doesn't want to fix the corruption. That's exactly what you should do. You should voice your dissent with the government and yell shame. If they had hurt her, I would be say the exact opposite. I say that would be terrible and that would be the worst. It would be counterproductive. Don't ever harm anyone physically. But what do you?

So you want your wife and yourself to be immune from criticism, even though you guys are charged with corruption. So no deal. I think that their protesters handled it nearly perfectly. And so in terms of Hawara, yeah, it's an epic. disaster. And now you've got one of the top ministers in this awful hideous Net Yahoo government saying that you should, you know, he halfway quarter of the way walked it back, but saying you should exterminate the village of Hawara. Well, he didn't really walk it back. So I want to get

into those details right now, actually. So Palestinian rights activists have noted that the right side sling slide is a direct and predictable continuation of a system that denies its Palestinian citizens full rights under the law. And what happened in Huara was just absolutely awful. The person that Jank was referring to, the government official that Jank was referring to is the finance minister of Israel. And he said, quote, I think, I think that Huara needs to be wiped out, but the state of Israel needs to do it, most certainly not private citizens. That was his so-called walkback, right? He was upset that vigilantes did what they did. But his statement It did, his initial statement, did seem to incite violence.

So you can judge for yourselves. Let's take a look at the next video. An Israeli raid of a safe house left 11 Palestinians dead last week. With militants, the Israeli defense forces said they were targeting among them, along with some civilians. Then two Israelis were killed, leading to a mob of Jewish settlers, setting Palestinian homes and cars on fire, leaving one dead. And night, the settlers attacked us.

I saw them, said this child. When they burned the car, my mother went down with a bucket of water to put out the fire. Netanyahu calling for peace and saying people should not take the law into their own hands, but also vowing to expand the settlements. The newly appointed hardliner finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, calling on the Israeli government to wipe out the village. Saying in Hebrew, I think the village of Hawara needs to be erased. I think the state of Israel should do it.

The U.S. State Department condemned. his comments, these comments were irresponsible, they were repugnance, they were disgusting. And look, while you can certainly condemn any type of violence that's committed, including violence committed toward Israeli citizens by Palestinians, this kind of vigilante justice and the incitements to violence, encouraging people to carry out these acts of violence, including burning people's homes down is unacceptable. I mean, unacceptable to the point that even the United States condemned it, which is rare, honestly.

Very rare. Of course, it's totally pointless. They said they were calling him out. That doesn't mean a goddamn thing. To take away $1 from Israel's aid, and then I'll believe you that you care. But there's no way you would do that. And when you send the next shipment of aid to Israel and Netanyahu's government, you're saying to Smorich, go ahead and exterminate anyone you like, okay?

We're speaking with our dollars, okay? Now it is a bull BS calling out. Oh, wow, did you criticize? All right, guys, real quick on this stuff. Number one, Smotrich is a monster. And Yir Lepid and other Israelis leaders, Lepid is the leader of the opposition. He's also right wing, by the way. Yes, but at least he's not for extermination.

And so, I mean, this is the situation we're in where he said this Jews should never be calling for exterminations. Of course, of course that's true. It's unbelievable that ignoramus' monsters like Smotrich would call for stuff like that with no sense of history. None doesn't care. All he cares about being is being savage towards others. It's disgusting. And by the way, I just want to make sure that we cover all our bases and give you all the details. So let's go to Graphics 6 here because what prompted this kind of reaction toward this village?

Well, apparently it was, so Smotrich was responding to a question asking why he had pressed like on a tweet by Samaria Regional Council deputy head, David Benzian. The tweet was written after an attack in which a Palestinian gunman fatally shot two brothers as they drove on Route 60 through the town of Huara. So that is what sparked this, but as a political leader, as someone who's a member of this government, it is your responsibility not to ratchet up more hatred and more violence, but to find a way to, yes, bring the gunman to justice. I'm not saying that you let them go, right, that there's no justice, but you don't encourage more violence because that doesn't make the situation safer for anyone, including the Israeli population. Well, Smokshu went on to clarify that for every act of terrorism, Palestinian shops should be closed.

Wait, did the shopkeeper do it? No, he doesn't care, collective punishment. Exactly what Jews should be against. And that is what other Jewish citizens of Israel are saying and saying we need to just arrest more Palestinians, take away more of their rights. You think that's going to lead to less terrorism or more terrorism? So you're saying, do not target the terrorists, just target Palestinians because you're not. deeply bigoted racist piece of crap. Well, you know, one of the criticisms that we've had is the disproportionate response from

the IDF, the Israeli defense forces or the Israeli government. But it's clear that that ideology is kind of baked into their system. In fact, Smotrich, let's go to Graphic 9 here, Smotrich said he noted that he supported harsh disproportionate responses by the IDF to terror attacks. Quote, for each stone that is thrown, a Palestinian shop should be closed. For every Molotov cocktail, there should be arrests and deportations, he said. Again, of not of the people who did it, but of random Palestinians. Okay, so look, guys, right now, so I have a hard ban for myself on the Gulf countries.

I'm not going to go to a country that led by fundamentalist Muslims who might arrest me for being agnostic or atheist, right? So I'm not going to risk my life and go to a country run by a dictator that might take my life away for no goddamn reason other than his nonsense thoughts. I now also have a ban on Israel. So I know no one cares. It's not like, oh, Israel's shaking in their boots. But I think, first of all, if you're Muslim born in any way, shape, or form, you'd be nuts to go to Israel. I mean, these guys are in charge now. You think Smotrich and Netanyahu would hesitate for a second?

These deeply bigoted monsters would hesitate. Oh, wait, no, but that's a different Muslim from a different country. It said, no way, no way. So I'm not going to take my life into my hands by going to a backwards country like Israel. And I don't want to support a backwards country that says I'm going to occupy these people for the rest of their lives because they're savages. And if they dare fight back, I will murder them and exterminate their villages. I'm not going to a country like that and none of you should go to a country like that. go to a country like that. I love the citizens of Israel that are rising up. I love Jewish

Americans in New York and other places that also did protests that are rising up. Those are my brothers and sisters and we fight together. But not these authoritarian right wing leaders, not in Israel, not in any country, always fight back against them. When we come back from the break, we'll come right back to the United States and do some domestic news, including some new revelations about Fox News coming from the Dominion defamation lawsuit, don't miss it. of us do this news together. You could hit the join button below the video on YouTube or go to t.com slash join everywhere else. Anna. Well, we've got some updates on the whole Dominion lawsuit against Fox News. Let's talk about it. Murdoch, here's the way it's going to be, brother.

You've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough, okay? They don't respect you. Read the depositions. The deposition, they have a fear, a loathing, and contempt for you. And you are the ones that can make changes. Steve Bannon was speaking against Fox News during CPAC this year, and of course providing cover for his daddy Donald Trump. But it is worth getting into some of the new details that have been uncovered as a result of Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News, because new reporting indicates that the chief executive of Fox was actually pretty upset that the network accurately called the state

of Arizona for President Joe Biden first. Now, they invested quite a bit of their resources into this system to determine who wins each state. And then it ended up that since Arizona went to Biden and since their audience didn't like the results, they were punished for it and wish that they hadn't have made that call. Now, according to the New York Times, they looked into a recorded Zoom call between executives and hosts over at Fox, and here's what we know. On Monday, November 16th, 2020, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, N.J. Wallace, the network's president, convened a Zoom meeting for an extraordinary discussion with an unusual goal. How to keep from angering the network's conservative audience again by calling an election for a Democrat

before the competition. Of course, the competition means other news networks, other news platforms. So the Fox executives were arguing that, you know, maybe they should abandon this sophisticated new election projecting system in which, again, Fox had invested millions of dollars and instead revert back to a slower, less accurate model, just so they don't feel the pressure. to, you know, report the truth to their audience, which might hurt their feelings. The details are stunning. I can't wait to give you more. But first, Jank, I'm curious what you think. I think the context of the 2000 election is really interesting here.

Because back then, Roger Ails ran Fox News, and they purposely use George W. Bush's cousin to call the election for George Bush based on 537 votes out of 6 million. So that is statistically irrelevant, even if it were true, but it wasn't true. So Fox News purposely through the election for George Bush, and they called it first, leading the other cowards at the other news stations to panic and call it for Bush when he had never won the election. Later we found out that Al Gore would have won the electoral college. He would have won the state of Florida, not just the popular vote, but the electoral vote. So now Fox News went in another direction. They have a really accurate system, and they're saying, God damn it, why did we stray away from lying?

We had it so good when we were lying and we were helping Republicans cheat their way to victories. And now our audience is furious with us because we didn't help Republicans cheat. That's totally true. This is, okay, in order to live in a well-functioning democracy, you need the news media to accurately inform the public. And here you have a very clear example based on evidence, video evidence, that the executives and the hosts have an interest in lying to their audience, honestly, mostly because they're concerned about the value of Fox's stock. Of course.

That's it. But guys, also remember, like, no one in the media talks about their own financial incentives for obvious reasons. They're not going to tell you, hey, I'm not giving you the real news. I'm going to give you news that makes me 40 million a year, you know, whether it's true or not true. They're never going to say that. They're not going to say it on MSNBC or CNN either.

Okay? So, but in reality, what do they care about? The only thing anybody ever cares about, especially the people in power, is the money, period. So let's read a quote from Suzanne Scott. Again, she's the chief executive over at Fox News Media. Listen, it's one of the sad realities, she said. If we hadn't called Arizona, those three or four days following election day, our ratings would have been bigger. The mystery would have been still hanging out there. And so later they talk about how CNN didn't call it because they think they wanted more of a buzz about the mystery, right? And I'm not sure that they're wrong about that at all. That might have been a factor in when CNN called things too.

This idea that they don't care about ratings and they don't care about profit is lunatic gaslighting given to by mainstream media. Oh, our beloved multi-billion dollar corporations, we're never care about profit. We're only interested in truth and news. So during the Zoom meeting, there were Fox hosts involved. The two Fox hosts that were noted in this reporting included Brett Baer and Martha McCollum. And apparently the two main anchors suggested that it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations. But that viewer reaction is more important to consider.

Okay? And Martha McCollum is quoted as saying in the context of the Zoom meeting, in a Trump environment, the game is just very, very different. Meaning, no, let's just hide the reality and the facts from our audience. And so let's also rewind a little because again, on election night, Fox News was in fact the first to call the state of Arizona for Biden, which angered Trump and his supporters. And Scott actually wasn't happy about it and suggested the next morning that Fox not call any more states until certified by authorities. Now, the formal process, the process that she was calling for could have taken days, if not weeks. And she was somehow talked out of that. Okay. Now, Brett Bear, though, wanted to do something even more insane. Bear

suggested reversing the call. That's so insane, guys. It's insane. That's insane. That's insane. reversing the call, that's crazy. Biden won Arizona and Bear's like, our audience doesn't like it, maybe we should reverse the reality, like just lie to the audience and tell them what they want to hear. I got to say one quick thing before you go on with that quote, Anna. Brett Bear is considered by all, everyone in mainstream media as the straight news guy. As the journalist, yes. The journal of real, there's real journalists and Foxxley.

To this day, and they'll say tomorrow and a week after, corporate media gaslighters will tell you, Brett Bears, the real journalist at Fox News. Now remember if I get a high paying job there later, I will be one of the real journalists there. Yeah, I see you. So again, he suggested reversing the call. He says, quote, it's hurting us. He wrote Jay Wallace, the president of Fox, and others in a previously reported email. The sooner we pull it, even if it gives us major egg, and put it back in his column, the better we are.

in my opinion. He knows for a fact that Trump lost. It is clear based on everything he's saying. Yep. And he's like, pull to Arizona callback and put it in his column. Actively lie on behalf of Donald Trump because I'd like to get paid more. I don't want the lunatics in our audience to turn on us, cost us ratings and stock price. So guys, look, this is crystal clear.

It doesn't get any clearer than this. Brett Baer's a joke. Literally everyone who works at Fox News right now that's on air or exactly. are a joke, they're lying to you on purpose, and all they care about is money. It's amazing. Jay Wallace didn't even want to announce when Biden had won the state of Nevada. On Friday night, November 6th, when the decision desk's Bill Salmon's team was ready to call Nevada for Biden, sealing his victory, Wallace refused to air it. Quote, I'm not there yet since it's for all the marbles, just a heavier burden than an individual

state call, Wallace wrote into text message. Like don't tell the audience. Don't tell them. Let's try to not tell them what's really going on. Now rather than be the first to call the election winner, Fox ended up being the very last network to do so. CNN declared that Biden was the victor the next day at 1124 a.m. followed by other networks. But Fox did not concur until 1140 a.m. some 14 hours after Salmon's election team internally, internally had already concluded that the race was over and Biden did in fact win. And look, even though they withheld that information as long as they could, it didn't matter.

The damage was already done and Trump supporters were irate. I've never seen a reaction like this to any media company, Tucker Carlson wrote Scott in a November 9th message released in a court filing. Scott complained to a colleague that Salmon did not understand. the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling Arizona and it was his job to protect the brand. Then the November 16th meeting happened and Bear did not think that Fox should have been the first to call Arizona clearly. We are still getting bombarded. It became really hurtful. Oh did it, Brad? I know the truth hurt your feelings, Brad. I know the statistics and the numbers,

but there has to be like this other layer so they could think beyond about the implications. No, by the way, they explained. Amazing quote. In the Zoom call, they never, both he and McCollum never explained what the other layer was. We know what it is. Because there is no explanation other than take the truth and layer on lies on top. No, no, the other layer is their audience and their feelings. That's the other layer.

That is what he's referring to there. Yeah. And so Bannon is right that they have the Fox executives and hosts have. of great disdain for their audience. You can see it in all the internal quotes. But what the party doesn't tell you is they are correct in having disdain for their audience. Their audience demands to be lied to.

If you do not lie to them, they get furious. And by the way, that's not mentioned in any of the stories. They always blame it on bear and the executives and Murdoch. But they never point out, hey, by the way, they're all having this conversation that is absolutely correct, the ratings did go down because their audience doesn't want to the goddamn truth. They just don't want it. I thought the facts don't care about your feelings. Well, it turns out the facts care a lot about Republican feelings. Yeah, I guess. A lot, especially Fox. I want to say one more thing about what Tucker Carlson said. He said the brand. The brand's

going to get hurt. Think about what Tucker Carlson thinks is the Fox News brand. He thinks it is too light of the audience, not tell them who actually won the election, hide the facts, and cover the facts in BS that'll make their feelings better. Like, hey, you guys are still in charge. It doesn't matter that you lost. If you're white, right winger, you're still in charge. Oh, Fox News audience loves that. Yes, I don't care about goddamn democracy.

Give me the power. And that is the brand of Fox News. A bunch of lying horse crap that right wingers love to hear. Tucker Carlson is correctly analyzing their brand. And yeah, Jay Wallace was upset at the network's success in developing a new system that accurately projected the outcome of these races well ahead of other news networks. We created a mousetrap. Was the mousetrap too good? Part of me is like, oh, should we have been more conservative? And should we have stuck with national with national election pool? So that's the old way or the previous way. That's less accurate. That's less accurate. Would that have changed things?

would there still be this ire? He's literally saying, what if we were less accurate? I know. Like, what if we didn't lie on purpose but put out numbers that we know are way less reliable? Okay, they're having this conversation at a news network. Okay, last thing for me, Bill Salmon and Steyerwalt, the guys who were involved in making the call in Arizona. So that's the critical state. Fox calls that first.

They panicked and called a whole election last. So you get that context. They never waver from that Arizona call. They're absolutely right. They're proven right by the numbers. And so you say, well, at least there's some good honest conservatives. By the way, we have criticized both Salmon and Starwald heavily on this program, okay, for their conservative perspective. Okay.

But at least there's honest conservatives of Foxx. No, there isn't. They were let go. They're gone. Every honest person at Fox News has been told to leave. We have no room for you here. want you here. So salmon and Steyerwald, very conservative, but honest. And that is unacceptable to the Fox News audience. And now the Fox News hosts and executives. So they're goners.

Well, let's go back to CPAC, unfortunately, where Donald Trump did in fact attend, and he gave a speech. And you're about to see some bits and pieces of it right now. We actually, and I have to say this, I hope Fox doesn't turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016. I won the second election. Okay, I won it by a lot. You know, when they say, when they say Biden won, The smart people know that didn't.

A lot of people said, well, sir, the election was so bad. You'll be in one year, a lot of people in this room. You'll be back in six weeks, sir. But it's a bad system in many ways, very bad, very dangerous system. He just heard from former President Donald Trump argue that democracy is a very dangerous system during his CPAC speech last Saturday. Now, what blows my mind is if you listen to the entirety of his speech, there were some pretty strong moments. We're going to show you some of those moments in just a moment. I didn't mean to be repetitive there.

But he can't let go of 2020 and it's so, like it's actually hurting him and he doesn't even realize it. If he goes back to his old hits and just sticks to that, he's got a good chance of being president again. He has an excellent chance as it is right now. Even with the whiny little bitch that he is, he's almost definitely going to win the Republican nomination. And you're sure Biden's going to beat him? So you're looking at the favorite to be the next president of the United States. And that is, man, God, America, what, this is a bad state of affairs. I mean, you saw that just real quick to double doubt on what you said, Anna.

He's like, a lot of people in this room said, I should be back in six weeks after the election. But we have a very bad, very dangerous system. We have a very bad system because you couldn't do a coup within six weeks to get back in charge after you lost an election. That's a very dangerous system. Very dangerous system. You don't know that there's no method or process in the United States Constitution for putting the guy who lost back in charge six weeks later. I mean, even if you had somehow won and there is still no process to bring you back in six weeks, you just made that up. But again, Republicans love being lied to, so they ate this stuff up.

So listen, this story should concern everyone because what you just saw gives you a sense of who Donald Trump is and how he is not willing to give up power. Now, his stunts didn't work the first time around, but should he get elected again, who knows what kind of tricks he's going to pull, what he's going to attempt to do to remain in power should he lose his reelection bit again? And I say all this because in other portions of his speech, he touched on issues that are incredibly popular with the electorate. So I'm going to give you some examples starting with this. We're not going back to people that want to destroy our great social security system, even some in our own party. I wonder who that might be, that want to raise the minimum age of social security to 70, 75, or even 80 in some case. and that are out to cut Medicare to a level that it will no longer be recognizable. Listen, Trump might be a whiny bitch, but he's not stupid, and he realizes how incredibly popular that kind of messaging is.

Now, has anyone actually proposed raising the retirement age to 80? Not yet, but he knows exactly how to prey on the fears of the electorate. and posture as an individual who wants to protect those incredibly popular programs. Now, yeah, and I think that will give him a leg up in the election for sure. Enormously, not even close, okay? So look, guys, there's two different reasons why Trump is popular with Republicans, and people almost never talk about the second. So the first one is obvious, yeah, right wing has his entitlement complex and victimhood is there's no better example than Donald Trump.

Oh, we should be in charge no matter what. I don't like the others. I want to oppress the others. Yes, that is true for about half of Republicans, okay? And but there's the other half that love Trump for a different reason, which is he's anti-establishment and he's a populist. So he might be a fake populist, but he's still a populist. So he knows enough to say, I'm going to protect your Social Security, I want to protect

your Medicare against the bad guys, the guys, the global elites that are coming to get it, et cetera. The other Republicans are the global elites. I mean, not in the way that they trump says it. global elites, he means juice, right? But in terms of actual elites, the people in power of all different backgrounds, yeah, they definitely want to come after your Social Security and Medicare. And they want to do that so they could lower taxes on the rich, which is what Trump did, right?

So it's a mixed bag and that populist message is very, very popular. And there's no way a corporate robot like DeSantis can stand up to it. By the way, there's not a good, like why is it a Democrat saying that? Why isn't a Democrat saying they're going to raise the retirement age of 70, 75, 80, these sons of bitches, I'm not going to let him get away with it. Okay, so that's an excellent point. The closest that we've seen a Democrat do that was Biden's stunt during the State of the Union address, which was good, right? But I also think that the way you present that argument matters. And Trump is just better at speaking publicly about these things.

things, right? Biden did a good job in calling out the Republican Party and getting them to, at least for that moment, pretend as though they don't want to cut Social Security, right? So it was a different context. But nonetheless, I think the way that Trump messages this, even though I don't believe him for a second, is convincing enough to win over a big enough portion of the electorate to get them reelected again. And I'm concerned about that precisely because of the very first clip we showed you, indicating that he has absolutely no respect for our democratic process or the results of our democratic process. That kind of authoritarian mentality is terrifying. Now, group that in with his popular and populist messaging,

and we should be concerned, right? Now, the other bit of populist messaging he engaged in had to do with United States foreign policy. Let's take a look at that. We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid wars. If you look at Ukraine, and we all feel so badly about it, but why isn't NATO putting up dollar for dollar with us? We put up $140 billion, and they put up just a tiny fraction of that. And, you know, we all want to see success, but it's far more important to them than it is to us because of that location. Can't keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars protecting people that don't even like us.

Now, you know, in business, if you did that, what you do is you put up the money and then you say, but listen, we own half your country in case you win. I'm the only candidate who can make this promise. I will prevent, and very easily, World War III, very easily. And you're going to have World War III, by the way. You're going to have World War III if something doesn't happen fast. I got along very well with Putin, even though I'm the one that ended his pipeline. Remember, they said, Trump is giving a lot to Russia, really? Putin actually said to me, if you're my friend, I'd hate like hell to see you as my enemy.

The only president in modern history who did not have any new wars, no new wars. I finished some old ones. Now compare what you just heard to Sarah Huckabee Sanders response to Biden on the night of the State of the Union because it was nothing more than raw, raw support our foreign policy, support our troops, which shows you just how out of touch the establishment Republican party is with their own electorate. So there's that. Okay, so let me look, he's going populist here too. He's saying why doesn't NATO chip it? That's not such a bad point, okay? Now the way way that he wants a force native to chip in his extreme, but going in that direction is not

a bad point at all. So a lot of people go, hey, yeah, wait, why are we paying the whole bill? By the way, you want to know the real answer to why we're paying the whole bill because it goes straight to our defense contractors. So our corrupt government loves that we're overpaying, right? So number two, he then says, you know, if we give money in business, we own half your country. Wait, if we try to own half of Ukraine, how would that be different than Russia trying to own half of Ukraine. You don't make any sense at all. And one of the main reasons I'm against Donald Trump is because I'm afraid that he is the

most likely to start World War III because he's an idiot. And he might go, oh, yo, I'm gonna prevent World War III by nuking them first. We came extremely close to a hot war with Iran. I mean, he assassinated the top general in Iran. He ripped up the Iran nuclear deal. It's actually miraculous that we didn't engage in a hot war with Iran. But the bottom line is, how do you beat a fake populist like Donald Trump? You don't do it with an establishment candidate and you'd be an establishment candidate

there's like, oh yeah, our foreign policy where we spend endless money on people and never get anything back and enrich the oil companies defense. You're not gonna beat them that way. The country's too angry to win in that situation. You beat a fake populace with a real populist. But our number one problem getting to a real populist that can actually actually be logical and fight for the American people is democratic leadership in major media. Those are the two sets of people who do not want you to have a populist leader under any circumstance.

Now, just to give you a sense of how Trump's messaging sat with Republican voters, a straw poll at CPAC indicated that 60% of 62% of Republican voters would prefer Trump over DeSantis. DeSantis got 20%. Now the guys, the jury's almost all in. So the indictments could make him more popular. Maybe it throws a monkey wrench into this. Maybe DeSantis or someone else can make electability a real issue. So it's not written in stone yet, right? But right now Trump has an overwhelming likelihood to win the Republican nomination.

Yes, in this poll, DeSantis didn't show up to CPAC, CPACs become more extreme if that's possible. But having said that every poll is showing these kind of numbers, 62 to 20, it's not close. They love their Messiah Donald Trump. At best, DeSantis is an apostle. So it doesn't look like right wing media and right wing donors are going to be able to stop Trump. They're all on DeSantis's side. They're all aligned against Trump. But it's, it looks like it's not going to work right now.

He is the odds on favor to be the Republican nominee. The only reason why everybody doesn't agree to that is because, Corporate media, both mainstream and right wing media, are working so hard to do positive propaganda for DeSantis and negative propaganda against Trump. And of course, as an aside, progressives. So that's the only reason you don't know the obvious, which is that Trump's almost definitely going to win this nomination. Come back after the break to watch Steve Bannon debase himself. All right back on TYT, Jank and Anna, look at all around your friends. Ash Barrett, Gavin, Gavin Wykes, Zara Sarangoth, and Sophie Bliss.

You've all brought us Bliss. We appreciate it, we'd love being with you guys, thank you for being TYT members. Casper. Let's do it. Murdoch, you've deemed Trump's not going to be president. Well, we've deemed that you're not going to have a network, because we're going to fight you every step in the way. Donald Trump's buddy, Steve Bannon, declared war on Fox News for not being sufficiently supportive

of Donald Trump. And now you're about to watch Bannon use Fox's anchors' own words against them. Let's take a look. They don't respect you, read the depositions. The deposition, they have a fear. a loathing and contempt for you and you are the ones that can make changes. The shareholders

if you want your share price to stay up you need to take action. The first thing you need to do is get rid of Paul Ryan as an independent director. Let me leave you with what Trump is up against. He's not up against DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo.

He's up against Ken Griffin and Mitch McConnell and Murdoch. They have deemed if he wins the primary, they're going to work for the Just like they worked for Hillary Clinton, I was there. I can tell you they were in Clinton's camp the entire way. All they are is about money. And the only people can stop them on the face of the earth are you, you and you.

MAGA, MAGA, MAGA. The only thing I want to say about that little rant that Bannon engaged in is a lot of the critique that he has toward Fox News can actually be applied to himself. because as he talks about the contempt that Fox News has for its audience, which is definitely true based on the depositions that he's referring to, he didn't really seem to respect Republican voters much when he defrauded them of $25 million through his Build the Wall crowdfunding scheme. Now, federal prosecutors had indicted him. He was charged with money laundering, scheming to defraud, and also conspiracy. Two of the individuals who took part in this scheme, him pleaded guilty, but Bannon was pardoned by Trump in the final hours of his presidency.

And that's why he didn't end up going to prison as a result of what he did. So nonetheless, I'm going to give him credit for a number of things here. Number one, he found a shower. Nice job, Steve Bannon. Okay, it looks like for the first time he found a shower and a razor and a mirror. So that's impressive. Okay, but in all seriousness, he's actually right about all of those things. The only problem is what Anna said, which is that he's worse. But does Fox News have a fear or loathing and contempt of their own audience? Definitely.

It's in the transcripts now. There's no question about it. We have them on tape saying that they are afraid of their audience and they think that they're crazy and they're worried that they're going to leave and they have complete disdain for their audience. That is true, okay? He says, shareholders, you'd be better off by firing Paul Ryan and going deeper into the Magrocrime. Well, if you're a Fox News shareholder, there's a lot of truth to that. If you do actual news, your audience hates it, and it's absolutely clear.

If you do propaganda that isn't at all true that Steve Bannon and Donald Trump want you to do, they'll like it a lot more. That is true. Third thing, he said, Kevin, Ken Griffin, who runs a private equity company, is enormously rich in one of the top Republican donors. But he's representative of the Koch brothers and all the other Republican donors. Mitch McConnell, who are the head of the corporate Republican politicians, and Rupert Murdoch, right-wing media, representative, he's the number one guy in right-wing media, but also

represents the rest of the right-wing media. All of them are against Donald Trump. Why? Because they think Trump is a liar, they think that Trump's a bad guy? No, they were all previously in favor of that when they knew that Trump was all those things. They loved it. They didn't care at all.

No, they're against Donald Trump now because they think he's too unstable and we'll his instability to the stock market and they think he's only in it for himself and not the entire oligarchy. So they prefer a better servant like DeSantis or someone else to give them everything they want without a headache of Donald Trump. And so those are terrible guys, the Murdox and the Ken Griffins, and they are opposed to Trump. That is also true, okay? So Bannon's never been more correct. Of course, the irony here is he's a far bigger liar and far more dangerous. than any of those terrible other people. Right, there are no winners in this story, nothing but bad people, so let them fight.

But just going back to what I said earlier about how Trump's final act as president was pardoning Steve Bannon after he defrauded Trump's supporters in this whole build the wall scheme. Perhaps the reason why he was kissing Trump's ass so hard during his CPAC speech was because of the pardon. Because get a load of this, it's amazing. Note to Fox senior management. When Donald J. Trump talks, it's newsworthy. Okay, Murdoch, here's the way it's going to be, brother. You've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough, okay? He goes to East Palestine and gets the Biden administration.

It's a global news event, and you don't cover it live. Is there that much happening on Fox News at 2 in the afternoon that you can't cover him live? The Murdox immediately have to start covering President Trump. No special deals. Just cover the man, asking the tough questions. But we need to hear the voice of Donald J. Trump. Hey, an old man Murdoch while you're at it. Why don't you have no more softball interviews to the guys running against him?

And no more infomercials, okay? Play it straight. You play it straight, Donald Trump's gonna win the primary, and Donald Trump's gonna win the presidency. So in other words, Fox News, you must be a tool for Trump's campaigning so he can win, right? Which, you know, from what we know about the Dominion lawsuit and all of the texts and emails and meetings that have been uncovered, they certainly love to put their thumb on the scale, so it's not like it's unheard of for Fox to do that. Yeah, so I always wonder about what goes on as Steve Bannon's head because he's a rare guy in the right wing that is not dumb. Him and Tucker Carlson, they know exactly what they're doing.

They know exactly how they're lying. You don't go, oh, I raised $25 million in a criminal conspiracy where my other two guys went to jail and we didn't build a goddamn thing. And oops, golly, gee, where did the money go? Okay, I don't know what I'm doing. No, you know exactly what you're doing. He knows Trump lost Arizona. He knows that Trump lost the election. So there's a lot of idiots like Mike Lindell.

who don't know that. And by the way, one of those idiots is probably Donald Trump. Almost certainly he thinks he won the election. He's like, I don't get it, man. I saw that movie that I just said that there's so many mules. It must be true, right? But Bannon and Tucker Carlson are not as dumb as Trump and Lindell. So he's, does he think like we're the bad guys and it's kind of fun?

And so I'm going to bully Murdoch and Fox News into lying even more to their audience. so we can seize power and end democracy. I think that that's a real possibility. I think Bannon sees Donald Trump as a tool, an agent of chaos, to accomplish what Bannon's real goal is, right? First, let me just stop you to say, that is indisputably true. Yeah. Because we know from, remember why he got fired from the Trump administration the first

time around, because he gave his real opinion, so an author. And his real opinions was he had tremendous disdain and condemn for Trump. He thought this is a useful idiot for me to seize power, but obviously the guy's a moron, right? I remember that. Yeah, so, so that's Steve Bannon's actual opinions. So but Anna, what I don't know is he sees his power into what? He just wants to be the right hand man of the king and destroy democracy and like revel in it. Is that his goal?

Maybe. Isn't he a proponent of Alexander Dugan's insanity? Yeah, so and and so if he's an actual Duganist, that means he wants the world to return to the time of medieval Europe. Literally. Literally and it's insanity, right? Duganism is pure fascism, kill your political opponents and go back to one united religion that oppresses everyone else and is the only thing that is the guide for

people, not democracy. So maybe he is that monster and maybe Tucker Carlson is that monster because there is no logical explanation for, hey, I want to destroy democracy. and I know Trump will do it. Like, the only other explanation is just flat out greed. So what he criticizes Murdoch and Fox News for, he thinks, well, in a dictatorship, I'll make more money and I'll be able to finally oppress those people who I think are better than me.

And I'll have them under my boot. That is probably the most likely explanation. Things are going great. Lots of great people in the country. We got to take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk about an Israeli tech firm discovering hundreds of thousands of pro-Trump bots on Twitter. What's that about?

That and more coming up in the second hour of the show. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad-free. Access members. bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon