The Young Turks - Rudy Giuliani, Stephon Clark, and Cambridge Analytica

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

The Young Turks 05.03.18: Rudy Giuliani, Stephon Clark, and Cambridge Analytica A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from May 3, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join.  Hour 1:John Iadarola, Jayar Jackson, Mark Thompson. Rudy Giuliani reveals a payoff in Donald Trump’s legal battle with Stormy Daniels.  Hour 2:Lissette Padilla , Maytha Alhassen, Mark Thompson. Stephon Clark’s family’s private investigation releases a photo of Clark’s body showing he was in fact shot in the back. Cambridge Analytica is shutting down due to losing a significant amount of customers. A former employee explains how the company collected its data. 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-T-network.com slash join.

Thanks for watching. Welcome, everyone to another episode of the Young Turks. Jank is still gone. I am John Adirola, and I sort of subconsciously just pronounced our name the way Mark Thompson does a little bit because he's here and he's influencing me as he does everyone with his amazing voice. Oh, wow, that's kind of nice. What did you do? I want to hear it again.

No, I can't. You're on the spot. No, I can't do it. No. I don't even know what you're talking about, but. You know what I think he said? I like that. You're looking to the young turks.

No, no, no, no. What I say is, and it's what I say now every time I leave the building, I say, young turks. Like, I'll say it. Because when I come in, I say that. Because Mark is here. Jared Jackson, also here. Somebody must have accidentally moved your chair over here. I thought you're supposed to be over there.

What's going on? The thing is, is sometimes you sneak in, and then once the camera's on, you can't move me. It's over. Yeah, you have your own climate control community over there. That's true. You're going to have to swim with the rest of us. It's always great when, Jared. at the main table. I saw a comment

on, I think, YouTube that said it's kind of messed up that they make him sit over there. You think we told him to sit over there? This is the secret. Most of the time, I'm not even sitting over there. He does not want to get us on him, is the truth of it. Yes. Yes. Okay, that said, lots of news. We are going to return to one of my

personal favorite topics. Fuel efficiency, transportation, energy, all mashed together, and we're moving in the wrong direction. But at least we're moving fast in the wrong direction. We've got that. Oh, there is a story out of Louisiana, a story of injustice in our criminal justice system that I saw Sean King tweeting about. That is mind-blowing.

And it's still ongoing. This isn't a story that we have a resolution for. Perhaps you can get involved, actually. But we're going to start off with the biggest story of the day, the legal circus that is Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani just joined Trump's legal defense team in the past couple of days, basically, and he's already making breakthroughs in the case for the other side. He was on Sean Hannity's show last night, and when he was asked about the payments that Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, had made two Stormy Daniels, one of the porn stars that Trump had an affair with,

he revealed something new. Let's take a look. having having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman, $130,000, I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. So they funneled it through the law firm.

Funnels through law firm and the president repaid it. Oh, I didn't know. He did. There's no campaign finance law. Zero. That is great. I mean, everything Rudy Gianni said is awesome, but I left Sean Haynes. Oh, I didn't know that.

You just revealed way too much. Please just read the cards, Rudy. Exactly. You're not here to give us new info. So the reason that is significant is because, of course, up until this point, everyone involved in this story has denied that Trump knew anything about this or that he had repaid Michael Cohen, which I found very plausible because he doesn't pay people. Michael Cohen had said he'd never been reimbursed.

Trump said he had no knowledge of this whatsoever. Sarah Hageby, Sanders, had said, there's no knowledge. And then suddenly, casually, Rudy Giuliani, the new guy, the newbie, comes out and says, no, he was repaid. He was repaid. And also, so this was part of a string of a whole bunch of interviews he was doing. He started with Sean Haney. Actually, the majority of this, and it was by 30 minutes straight of them talking, was about Well, mostly Mueller.

And the investigation, how he's going to make sure he counsels the president not to speak or whether or not they will speak with Mueller under certain conditions. What about what the Clintons went through? Yeah. What about what we don't make sure this isn't a perjury trap? Again, we'll get into why that doesn't make any sense. How concerned about your president lying about what he did. But that's the concern.

Not that he might lie, but that they might set him up to lie. It's real easy. If he's not going to lie, then answer the question truthfully. I thought that's what we do in America. Yeah, Giuliani had, it seemed, a couple of agendas, right? One was to dirty up the investigation, which he did. And as you say, he was kind of on a media tour to do just that, right? To run down the special counsel and to essentially buttress the idea that the investigation is a witch hunt.

And it's so far, of course, that it's become a tainted by a lot of government involvement and government overreach is the way he might put it. in perhaps not those words, but suggestion that this entire thing has now taken on a political tone, while, of course, what he's doing is a purely political exercise. And then he's trying to clear Trump from the idea that there is collusion. And that's why he was trying, and campaign problems, and that's why he was getting into that soundbite that we just heard, right? But it leaves open the door for obstruction of justice. Yeah, he thought that he simply had to lay out that it wasn't campaign funding and that We wrapped the whole thing up.

He paid him back, not realizing that each part of that also opened up Trump to more legal jeopardy. Now, I realize that many of you watching this are not shocked to find out that Donald Trump is lying about something, even lying about potential lawbreaking. But for those who are maybe new to this haven't been paying attention for the past year, I want to make it very clear. Let's play this next video where you're going to see Donald Trump totally denying any knowledge of this sort of thing. Did you know about 130,000? Then why did Michael go and make it if there was no around the agent? You have to ask Michael's my attorney and you'll have to ask the Michael.

Do you know where he got the money to make that payment? No, I don't know. So he didn't know anything about it, even though apparently by the time he was asked that question, he had already paid for it, paid for it and paid more, paid for the taxes on it and all of that. You mentioned that he was on Rudy Giuliani, he was on a media tour. Part of that was an interview at the Washington Post where he was asked by Robert Costa, when was the president told about these payments? And Giuliani said he wasn't since it was somewhere between 10 and five days before the election. And he wasn't told. But even if he was told,

he wouldn't have remembered it. So that's an airtight case they got there. Like I wouldn't have remembered it. Also, I don't remember it. Also, where am I? He was paid out of personal funds, which covered that and possibly a few other things that, you know, would be considered incidental. I would love to find out what those other things are. And then they tried to craft this thing where they had a retainer that he was being paid out of, but that's not what retainers for lawyers are. I feel like these guys have only, like, heard about retainers on TV shows or something. It's not for repayment of totally non-legal, non-campaign personal expenses.

It doesn't make any sense. So these kinds of things, the lie, of course, has to evolve, but in this case devolve because of once you say the first line and people go, hey, well, that doesn't really make much sense, they're Rudolph. That's not how this may work because that's a problem. You may have cleared the one aspect and we'll get to what some ethics, former ethics heads have said about what this did lead to. Now you have to change your story to the next step. So now, oh man, my bad, that's right.

He knew about paying something back, just not about exactly what it is. So I can keep my veil over. He didn't know what was going on. Then there was some nondisclosure agreement, which we still haven't talked about yet, how if or why he did or did not sign it, now that is all up in the air. air. As you mentioned, John mentioned it right before we came on, there's now this dust, cloud of a dusty lie, and now you have to try and decipher as you look through all the cloud, what part of it is true, what part of it is not, what part of a half lies, one part of half-truths. But after you come, whatever you come up with, they then go, well, not that

part, just the 25% of that part, and then 35% of this part is what's true. So now we're just confused. Yeah, and the problem is that, like, so he goes out last night, he says this stuff reveals it throws their whole legal strategy up in the air. And then he's saying, well, Trump called me and said that it did a great job. But then in the next morning, he has to go on Fox and friends and clarify it. Donald Trump tweets a bunch of stuff, which we'll read in a second. Both of them create ripple effects from that of issues that are going to have to be resolved. So let's turn now to the next set. Donald Trump, who is apparently very happy with Rudy Giuliani, abruptly revealing what they had all been denying for months at this point, then tweeted

this. And let's see how likely it is that Trump himself was actually the person tweeting this. Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties known as a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. Somebody pointed out he apparently has a, like a term of the day calendar. These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth, also Donald Trump. In this case, it is in full force and effect and will be used in arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford's. The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair,

despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Mrs. Clifford and our attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign or campaign contributions played no role in this transaction. Now, they're focusing a lot on this NDA, this NDA that Donald Trump has. has until recently know nothing about, if you believe what he said. So somehow, this entire thing was crafted and paid for without any of his knowledge whatsoever. And that's incredibly important because all of this was going on in the immediate run up to the election, where any sort of payment like this would be an in-kind contribution to his campaign and would be a

violation of campaign finance laws. The few laws we actually have in this country that mandate how much you can actually spend. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fibing 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-B-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 and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must learn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered,

and entertained all at the same time. Also, by the way, and this is just sort of a tangential. thing. He's being sued by Stormy Daniels and her lawyer for defamation. And apparently, I haven't been following that case very closely, but apparently up until now, it's been

sort of like hasn't really talked about her too much. So the idea that he's defame here was a little bit hard to prove. But right there, he attacks her multiple times in a very clear way. So while he's trying to defend himself from the Michael Cohen thing, he might have been making this part worse for himself as well legally. Yeah, I mean, this guy, they're just, it is

lies, lies, lies. And as you say for a guy who knows nothing as he was confronted by the press on the plane, about the $130,000, he said, I don't know anything. And then you saw in those tweets that John just read, he knows everything, I mean, down to sort of granular specifics. And then as John says, he mentions her by name. So there could be a defamatory aspect to this. There are all sorts of issues here. And I'm so glad that J.R. mentioned the dustiness and just kicking up dust to make this investigation so cloudy that one begins to lose track of fact. That's deliberate. And the idea here, and Giuliani was part of it, even though he did it clumsily. The idea was to go on a media jihad for Trump,

to begin to dirty up this investigation and try to clear the name of Trump in any way possible. And that's what Rudy is out there doing. And that's what they're all doing. In fact, this new defense team for Trump is going to do that more. They're going to fight. the political fight, even as they fight the legal fight on the side. That way, they don't have to deal with as many facts. Because then people who support this administration blindly, they already know that's how it works for the base. So as long as there's no clear-cut facts that come out to make someone have to change their mind, where they go, wow, that happened? The way that there was a surprise in Sean Haney's voice, and he said, oh, really like when

you stop and go, how do I keep going with this? That can't be there. If it's there, then there's no more arguments where people can say, oh, you just hate the president. But as long as there's still this cloud of unsure facts floating around and lies floating around, the sycophants can say, oh, you just hate our president. Stop, stop with this. Because I don't know what's going on because it's hard to tell. Yeah, exactly. And they're not getting any accurate information.

Also, one of the reasons I find this to be interesting is Rudy Giuliani and others are saying that Cohen didn't do anything. didn't do anything, but in fact, the person who should be investigated are all of the investigators in this matter, because what they're doing in relation to Michael Cohen is illegal and immoral and all of that. They keep attacking that and all of that. But here's the thing. They're investigating Michael Cohen for good reason, and the reasons keep getting better every day. If he is saying that he wasn't repaid, and he said that multiple times, although we now find out that he has been being repaid month after month until eventually it was all repaid, why is he lying about that? What possible explanation could there be for that? And Rudy Giuliani actually doesn't have a good response

to that. If we could go to video seven, actually, you're going to see Giuliani attempting to cover for that obvious follow-up to what he had revealed on Andy's show. Something that did stand out to me, I remember when Michael Cohen was interviewed about it, and it seemed like he was saying that he was never reimbursed that $130,000, and now it sounds like the story's changing. Well, he, I mean, he was definitely reimbursed. There's no doubt about it. So why did he say he wasn't? Maybe, maybe, first all, if we had to

defend this as not being a campaign contribution, I think we could do that. This was for personal reasons. This was the president had been hurt personally, not politically, personally, so much. And the first lady, by some of the false allegations. That one

more false allegations, six years old, I think he was trying to help the family. For that, the man is being treated like some kind of villain. And I think he was just being a good lawyer, and a good man. There's no explanation there as to why he would have lied about that. And also, if he was just helping him out out of the goodness of his heart has nothing to do with the campaign, why was he paid back at all? If he was just helping him out?

That seems a little bit odd. Or was he paid back? Or was he paid back? I mean, who knows? And here's the thing. That is important because as you alluded to, there are potential, that could have been illegal as well. Former President Obama Ethics Chief Norm Eisen is, and by the way, he's just one of many, saying this. The revelation that the president repaid Michael Cohen may prove that Trump broke the law by failing to disclose the loan from Cohen on his federal presidential financial disclosures.

So, look, if it was about the campaign or if he didn't pay him back, then Michael Cohen likely broke campaign finance laws. If it wasn't about the campaign and Trump did pay him back, then it looks like Trump violated laws having to do with financial disclosures. So you really have to choose their poison here. Yeah, but you saw Giuliani default. to that there was no problem with campaign contributions being used to pay Michael Cohen. You see, you see him default to that position. They want to claim that high legal ground. But as you say, John, there are other areas of the law that are clearly running afoul of.

So I don't know how they put out all these fires. So that's why I say they're just really waging a public media campaign now. They're really just trying to win the sentiments of the public. such that the drumbeat of end this investigation gets so loud that something has to be done. Or you undercut the results of the investigation. Who knew? Ainsley Earhart would be the one who has the hard-hitting question. So Michael Cohen said that he wasn't repaid. It seems like this is changing.

He goes, well, he was. Usually, that's where it would end. Instead, she said, so why did he say so? Yeah. The best follow of questions are usually why, when, how. But she just straight up said, so why did he say so? And he couldn't answer it. But then moved on, whenever you don't want to answer, you go on to something personal.

It hurt the president personally. Yeah, that was all just rhetoric. And, you know, so much of this, and you'll see this, I think, more in the days ahead, Giuliani and a lot of the people who Trump has surrounded himself with, they're full of an arrogance. They're full of political arrogance, and they're full of arrogance that comes from having a lot of money and power. And that's something else you should remember. Very rich people. And I'm not one of those people who just hates all rich people.

But this is a pretty hateful group of rich people, and they're not used to playing by any rules at all. Not the rules certainly that you and I play by. And I think you're seeing that. That arrogance and not playing by the rules is being played out in a very transparent way. Yeah. By the way, there was one other way that last night, or I guess in the fallup this morning, Rudy Giuliani, undercut what they were trying to say. One of his main missions on Fox and Friends was to say that this had nothing to do with the campaign. kept saying that had nothing to do with the campaign, was purely personal, he was just trying to protect the feelings of Melania Trump. I would say one of the best ways to do that is to not

sleep with an adult film star a couple months after she gives birth, but what do I know? I've never been married. But he kept saying that, and then later on in that same sit-down interview with Fox and Friends, he then said, can you imagine what it would be like if this came out during that last debate with Hillary Clinton, how damaging that would be. What you seem to be saying it had an effect on the election or that its absence took away what could have been an effect on the election. So, man, I'm so glad that he's joined Trump's defense team. It is just great for them.

But as we've been alluding to, this isn't the only thing that he's there for. I mean, it very much is a media blitz on the offense. And one of the things he's attacking is the legitimacy of the entire investigation. he said this, the basis of the case is dead, sessions should step in and close it. There's been too much government misconduct. The crimes now have all been committed by the government and their agents, not by any of the almost two dozen people that have been indicted or several that have already pled guilty to charges coming out of the investigation, not them, just the government agents.

And we're hearing this more and more every day. Exactly, but there it is, government misconduct. I said government overreach before, but he's suggesting specifically those investigators have their own political agenda, which is bizarre also since their GOP appointed. So none of this stuff passes the smell test, but it is part, as you say, of a media blitz, and it is going to continue. Yeah. Yeah.

Other thoughts? No, no, no. Okay, no. Okay, well, we're going to go to our first break, though. When we come back, this morning, the media actually got it wrong on a story and had to correct themselves, but did so. And so we're going to talk about that when we come back from this break. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through.

So hold, hold, stay right here. Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free. These are just two of them. Every day we do it. So go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. And you'll get the whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now.

Welcome, everyone. I am Lissette Padilla. Happy to be back with you. I'm also joined by Mitha Alhassen and Mark Thompson. Hi. You may be familiar with them as well. They've been here quite a bit. Would you like to tell us a little bit about your background? Sure. There's a lot going on with me. As you know, if you've ever visited my website. I've never found a way to cohesively put everything I do together. So I have my PhD in American Studies and ethnicity. And I have a background in social justice. disorganizing, doing media stuff. I was a co-host on Al Jazeera for a couple of years. And then what else have I done? Art, poetry, traveled a lot.

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ExpressVPN hides your IP address. making your active AD more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN.

And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra. months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Wow, okay, you've got the job. You're overqualified. Yeah. I'm Mark Thompson. Good to see you again. And I have a podcast called The Edge with Mark Thompson. You have to put the With Mark Thompson part in because there are a million shows called The Edge. It's a pleasure to be here. I have a Ph.D. from the streets. Yeah. No, it's great. And it's really a pleasure to be on the panel with you both. Thank you. It's good to be with us. Likewise. It's good to be back.

To start off with our first story, we're going to be talking about Stefan Clark. You might be familiar with the story already. So, Stefan Clark, as you may remember, was fatally shot and killed by Sacramento police officers. And even though he was not armed, there are some conflicting videos and evidence that suggests that, this may have been unnecessary for other reasons as well. Now, there are contradicting reports on how many shots Stefan Clark was hit with as well as where those shot entered his body. Now, the Sacramento coroner's report states that Clark was hit three times in the back and seven times total, but the Clark family actually hired an independent investigator who states that the total number of shots was actually eight, and six of those shots were

fired on his back. Now, this is important because the difference in opinion here has a lot to bear on any future case, and the Clark family is expected to file a civil suit. Now, I want you to take a look at some of the graphics here to illustrate where the shots may have been. Now, it's hard to tell from this, but one of the things that has happened more recently is that the private investigator released a photograph. We won't release the photograph due to its graphic nature, but he stated this of the photo. Experts may have different opinions, but a picture is a picture. A picture does not have an opinion. Yeah, they're saying essentially, look, I don't care what these bought and paid for coroners are saying who are trying to support a certain narrative, in this case,

the argument goes, right, that it's supporting a law enforcement narrative. So that would mean that most of the shots are in the front, right? The more shots that are in the back, the more law enforcement is on thin ice. It's like, why did you shoot a guy who's running away from you? Right. In other words, there's no threat to you if he's running away from you, is the thinking. So in essence, that's why the private investigator released those photos, that they're damning. The cops keep the narrative going about how there's a threat to their lives.

And that's really, and really that's what's underpinning the whole law enforcement story. Well, it's what should tell you a lot is the way that the police story continues to change consistently. So that's always the question, which is whose story is remaining consistent and whose story changes. And we've already seen this multiple times, the fact that the police have in different cities, like most recently in Brooklyn, have been charged with lying about finding, a gun in an apartment. And then last year, there's a whole series of investigations around cops planting fake evidence in traffic stops that were caught on tape. So this is not too inconsistent with how law enforcement has treated, mostly black folks.

And it should be said that Dr. Bennett Amalu, and we've talked about this before concerning the Stefan Clark case, comes from very reputable background, a very reputable background. He was the pathologist who was able to identify the brain injuries that led to the brain injuries in NFL players that led to a huge investigation and even a big Hollywood film around this topic. So his story has stayed the same. And I hope that the press isn't won over with the consistently morphing story of the police department. And, you know, Malu said some really interesting things, which was that the coroners didn't. not take the spinal cord out, which would have been necessary. It would have been tricky, but it would have been necessary to really assess the damages

to the body. And the fact that when he flipped over the body, he also saw the shots to the back, which, again, they could have missed in their first account as well. So, you know, I kind of trust the guy who has a long background in history in this work. And also who, I mean, yes, he was hired as a private investigator, I mean, as a private autopsy pathologist, but you know, he really

has a lot more credibility than the police department. I think in this particular case too, and in many cases, what is unfortunate is that the coroner's office will typically perform an autopsy and in performing that autopsy and gathering evidence, body parts are removed, things are changed, holes are poked into the body,

like it becomes something that it wasn't in its original form after the incident. And when we have private investigators and pathologists, scientists, taking a look at bodies during the second round, it can lead to a lot of discrepancies and perhaps errors. So that makes it a bit complicated. I think that that's something that will definitely be discussed more. But I think you're right that the narrative here is what's important. And regardless of whether it was three shots or six shots in the back, I think when we look at the footage, clear that some of this violence may have been completely unnecessary.

And the DA there has a lot of questions about her reluctance to bring forth a prosecution. She has a lot of law enforcement money flowing into her campaign. And so that is something that Anne-Marie Schubert's her name. She's a friend of law enforcement, and so reluctant to bring any charges is the argument against these law enforcement officers. And that argument's backed up with a lot of evidence of law enforcement money is flowing into her campaign. So there is more than just some confusion about this.

It would appear that there is money affecting this entire narrative as well. Totally. Totally concur. Okay. So Cambridge Analytica, the marketing research firm embroiled in the Facebook election scandal is shutting down. It has seized all of its operations and is expected to file for bankruptcy. Now, the company has not admitted any wrongdoing, but in a statement released, they said the following. The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company's

customers and suppliers. As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business. Now, if you're not too familiar with Cambridge Analytica and their marketing research methods, an employee actually give us a little bit of insight about how the company worked and some of their tactics. Take a look. This app then crawls through your social network

and captures all of that data also. So by you filling out my survey, I capture 300 records on average, right? And so that means that all of a sudden, I only need to engage 50,000, 70,000, 100,000 people to get a really big data set really quickly. So while only about 300,000 people filled out the company's survey and accepted that their data be shared with a company, because these 300,000 or so people shared their data, they also inadvertently shared their friends' data and their friends on Facebook were completely unaware of this. This is what people are very upset about, that they're.

data may have been used in political ads and campaigns that they did not consent to. Yeah, this is like the old, in the early days of HIV, they talked about the fact that, you know, everyone you have sex with, you're having sex with everyone that they had sex with. And, you know, that's how the virus spread. In this case, thanks for the visual. This suggests, well, believe me, the visual can get a lot worse than that. It's how this entire data mining has spread. And by the way, I like that we've reached a point in the culture.

I really mean it. I mean, I literally like it that the authority in this story, who we got a little information in detail from, has that wild dew with the pink. And it doesn't actually undercut his credibility. It actually reinforces his credibility, meaning, you know, in the new world of technology, there's no dress code, there's nothing. Like, this is a more credible source. So I just, it's an aside, but I kind of like that moment. Let's make no mistake, though. Cambridge Analytica is, it may be shutting down or it may, but I think what's happening here is a little what happened with Blackwater. I was literally going to say that too.

The private military service, Blackwater, they closed down and they reconstitute themselves. There's a lot of different things, different companies that continue to do the same paramilitary operations that are both domestic and foreign. So I think that's what's going to happen here with Cambridge Analytica. They're closing down, but they've already reopened in another form under another name. So I don't, I'm not particularly encouraged by this at all. Right, right. Public condemnation doesn't equal demise or ultimate demise as well. And, you know, for folks that don't know, Eric Prince behind Blackwater, moves to Abu Dhabi, forms this company called EX something. And probably it's on its third or fourth iteration at this point to evade any sort of public scrutiny linking him to a private mercenary company.

So, yes, I completely agree with that. And the issue is that folks are probably going to get away with what they have done and they're not going to be held culpable. I mean, there's this aggregate IQ as well, other sort of companies. And I will say that I do feel really, really shameful that I took that personality test of which city that I thought that I belonged to. Because that's what this was mining. But the last thing I'll also say is that for as much as this is getting, is being stigmatized, Cambridge Analytica, because it intervenes with our liberal democratic narrative, we've also evaded in drawing attention to another company that was also accused of

data mining, geophilia. It was in the news a couple of years ago, and I wish it got as much attention that Cambridge Analytica did, and I'll tell you why it didn't. Geophilia mined people's profiles from Facebook who had priors, so priors in a legal law enforcement sense, and sent it to law enforcement so that law enforcement would be able to pool people's identities when they were at protests to see if they could go after them based on whether or not they had prior. So clearly that's affecting a certain kind of population. Instead of a certain kind of narrative we have about ourselves as an America that has free and fair elections. So while you all are Yeah, while you all are holding Cambridge Analytica to the fire and watching Morphs as well,

please do look up what happened with Geophilia and also Color of Changes campaign trying to highlight the horrendous things that this company has done as well. Wow, that's extraordinary. I didn't know that. I think it's interesting, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, well, it's worth reminding us all that when you take that personality test on Facebook and it's free or when you sign up for Facebook and it's free, nothing's free. When you go on Google and it's a free search, it's not free. It's keeping track of your search. Your data, who you are on Facebook, how you make contributions to Facebook, all of your posts. Even you take that personality test, which is sort of the, you know, bald-faced example of it that we've heard from Cambridge Analytica, all those things are being monetized.

If you're not paying for it, then you're paying for it another way. And it just, again, it's something to keep in mind moving forward. Nothing is free. If you're not paying for it, you're paying for it with data when it comes to technology. Right. And we all need to be wary of companies like this that, like you say, offer us a free product generally because really the cost is unknown. Now, in this particular case with Cambridge Analytica, I guess the silver lining might be that their ads likely did not work very well. So there isn't any research available currently that says that people are good at taking this data and turning it into compelling ads that will sort of. sway your political preferences. There is some evidence that they can sway your purchasing

actions as well as your beliefs that when they're associated with your personality. So if ads are targeted towards your personality, they may influence your purchase of a beauty product. But there's very little evidence that they can influence who you vote for, not for decisions that big. So that may be the silver lining here. Right. Well, I mean, I would say too that, unfortunately, we sometimes don't take an interdisciplinary approach around this. So it might be a little bit of influence from that and influence from possible like Russian collusion and influence from all these other different vectors. And that's what I'm interested in seeing is some sort of study that combines all those variables to see what produces certain outcome. But I'll also

note because we love to see ourselves as a, again, a free liberal democracy that we feel especially hurt when we've done this for decades in other countries. So I'd love to see us exposing and being transparent of that fact if we really want to solve the intervention in our own elections? Well, the election intervention, there's no question you're right. I mean, my God, the United States is we do it the old-fashioned way where we just replace leaders around the world or we do it the new-fashioned way with our own sort of technologies. But this is a, this is a situation in which if you're served advertisements, as you're saying, which is interesting, That bothers me less than being served information or disinformation.

And that's really what's happening now. They're carpet bombing Facebook and other social media sites with news that is not accurate. And it's being churned out like sausage links around the world and then distributed across these social network platforms. And was also marketing themselves as being able to sway elections based on the content that they were producing in terms of online advertising. and they were saying they were, you know, a forerunner in their field. So I think that should be up for public debate. Right. Whether or not it influenced elections or even the Brexit vote, I mean, there's talk about it in that context.

Jury might still be out on that. Although, as you say, we don't really know. So let's just put it aside. But certainly that, again, that news or information that serve to you because they know certain things about you from an analytic standpoint. point, that could be very dangerous. And I'm just sorry, just last thing, because as journalists, we know that Facebook is not a publisher, I won't own the fact that they're a publisher, so they won't go to do diligence to mine the information that it's on its side or being paid for to be on its side.

So I think that's what I mean by it needs to be up for public debate, is whether or not, if Facebook is a publisher, then it needs to go through all this sort of content. If it's not, then there needs to be a different sort of conversation to have in terms of what information is available and what information can be bought. Thanks. Are we taking a break now? I know we mentioned we were going to go to break. Okay, great.

We'll take a break now and we'll be back with more TYT. Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and can watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. no ads at all that's at t yt network dot com slash join come become a member thanks for watching either way 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 dot co slash t yt i'm your

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