The Young Turks - Rudy's Bedroom

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Rudy Giuliani claims that he has evidence that proves Hillary Clinton spied on Donald Trump following the 2016 election. Recordings from law enforcement conferences reveal how tech companies are lobbying cops for contracts. An Indiana school reportedly provided parents with a form to 'opt out' of Black History Month. The U.S. nuked an island and now refuses to help its residents. Truck drivers at the port of L.A. are unionizing. Hosts: John Iadarola, Wosny Lambre 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. It's the Young Turks, everybody, mostly. It's the show, not the people, though. I'm John and Erlitt, not Jank Yugar. Joining me today, not Anna Kasparian. Oh damn, Wazdi Lombray. How's it going, Wazzo? I'm good, man. I'm good. I can only hope. hope to live up to those expectations in their absence, John.

Hopefully the people don't riot. Don't worry. If they do, it'll be digitally. No, this is the thing. Like you, those expectations, you're just placing that of yourself. Just to shrug those off. They're not here. We can do anything we want with this time. We're not doing politics. They prepped all this for nothing. Let's talk TV and movies, man. Maybe a little sports. It'll be fun. But anyway, glad to have you here. Was was recently on the damage report earlier this week. And so great to have a bit more time to talk with you. Same brother. Very excited. And everyone out there should be excited

too, because we've got some insane nonsense to talk about. Starting off with an inside look into Rudy Giuliani's bedroom. I know you've all been asking, we finally have access. Not really, but we'll talk about it. We've got some Indiana culture wars. We've got, oh, this incredibly interesting foreign policy story involving the Marshall Islands. I can't wait to talk about that. And then near the end of the hour, we know that Fox is really interested in the trucker protest. They just want what's best for truckers. Well, we've got a hypothetical for them to engage with. Are they actually interested in all of truckers' demands? So we're going to delve into a unionization effort going on right now by a group of truckers. But with all that said, we do have some

important domestic stuff to get through. So why don't we jump into this first story? Rudy Giuliani apparently likes to keep his secrets close, like really close, like in his bedroom. That's according to him. He found a way to make the never-ending conversation about the Durham report on Fox News about his bedroom. We'll get to that in just a minute. We want to catch you up a little bit on this scandal. It's actually a scandal, and it's also a feigned scandal. It is all that Fox has talked about for about a solid week now.

Here is effectively what you need to know about it. All of this coming from a filing in court last Friday. John Durham, who was appointed by then Attorney General William Barr back in 2020 to probe the origins of the FBI's investigation of Russian election interference, said in these filings that someone referred to as Tech Executive 1, not named in the filing, but identified as Rodney Jaffe, used his access to domain name system or DNS data to complete. compile information about which computers and servers the White House servers were communicating with. So look, we have tried to keep this as basic and digestible as possible, but invariably it gets into some complex sort of tech and computer lingo. We are also burdened by the fact that we actually want to understand what is actually being said. You should know that the vast majority of the commentary about the story did not pause for such trivialities as.

as that. Fox went 24-7 about this, having no idea, even the most basic information that we just revealed that one graphic, and others have been commenting ever since without any sort of ethical obligations or personal intellectual needs to actually understand what it is that they're talking about. So in these findings, there's a paragraph that said that Mr. Jaffe's company, this individual we were just talking about, New Star, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump. And from that, little information, everything has developed. The idea that some servers were infiltrated, which has been used with quotation marks, does not appear in that filing. But it's really exciting and sexy. And so in all of the coverage on Fox, they've inserted in there, claims about hacking and all of that. Supposed financial links to the Clinton campaign that have not been established and are not even alleged in the actual finding that generated all this media fervor, definitely makes for a more interesting scandal, though, Was. And so that's sort of where we enter to today. But now we want to

update with Rudy Giuliani, who, as with everything else involving Donald Trump, even tangentially, apparently was very involved with this. And here is what he had to say about these filings. Well, how do I think Trump knew about it back then? I can't tell you exactly how, but I know how you knew about it back then. There's a lot more to come out. This is not, I mean, what you're, they may feel that it's gobbledygook, but it's gobbledygook supported by about a thousand pieces of evidence, none of which have been revealed yet. I happen to have it in my bedroom or my den actually. I've had it there for years as well as the laptop.

votes. Okay, so was he apparently has this evidence. Are you convinced what he says that there's more to come out? What are your expectations in this? Yeah, there's absolutely no there. You can put this case right on the same pile that you would whitewater, that you would Benghazi. I mean, do you do people remember Benghazi and all the hearings and all the this and all the that and Clinton and the six Americans and blah, and absolutely nothing came of it, same of Whitewater. It was just, you know, it was literally a witch hunt, which this feels exactly that way. I don't think in any, don't expect in the coming days for something substantive or like necessary to come out of this. This seems like a joke and a farce.

It definitely seems like that. And by the way, some people might say, why are you being so dismissive about about this scandal. Are you trying to protect Hillary Clinton? Let me reassure you, no. If it's true, good. I don't like her and I don't support her as a politician. I just think that there are any number of actual scandals, any number of actual things she has done, positions she has held, positions she's changed as a result of campaign donations, many different things that you could legitimately attack her for. This is nonsense and it's particularly opportunistic nonsense. Not only does it allow Fox News to ignore anything else going on in the country for, I'm going to guess a solid three weeks before they finally move on from this, but what it also allows is everyone gets to comment on this and cosplay being against government surveillance.

I'm against this because it's spying and supposedly I don't like spying. And you've seen that all throughout this week. Any number of congresspeople, mostly on the right, but not exclusively, who were totally fine with the Patriot Act and Bulk collection of data by the CIA and other organizations are all now suddenly aghast at the idea of spying, but they didn't have a problem with it before. This lets them come in, like with the trucker protest on the part of Fox News, and pretend to hold positions that they don't in actual practice. Yeah, you can't buy the surveillance argument from the right wing.

That's their whole MO is that everybody deserves to be spot on, Because after all, John, if you have nothing to hide, why should you care that you're being spied on? What do you care about constitutional protections and rights if you're this perfect citizen who's never done anything wrong? And, you know, if your business became public fodder, it'd be completely fine. Isn't that true, John? I think that that is totally true. I think that that has a very fair point. I have a fair point I'd like to make, though.

Rudy Giuliani, if you supposedly in your bedroom or your den or you don't know, have had a third. 1,000 pieces of evidence that Hillary Clinton spied on Donald Trump, and you say you've had it for years, do you think maybe you should like bring it forward at some point? Why are you hiding all of this evidence that a prominent politician was spying on Donald Trump? That's bizarre. It's almost as if you don't actually have the evidence that in the end it will provide, it will present itself to be as substantive as the supposed evidence you've had that the 2020 election was stolen that never seems to actually present itself. In any event, there are no lengths that Fox will go to to make everything in politics perpetually

about Hillary Clinton. They're already trying to make all the conversation about 2024 about Hillary Clinton, which look, she could try to run. That's a thing that could happen. But so far, there's been no indication of it. And yet every single week they talk about it. Well, they're doing that here too. Domestic politics, all about Hillary Clinton. But did you Do you know there's a way that they can make foreign policy all about Hillary Clinton? Take a look at this video from Maria Bart Romo. Was this a ruse? Was this whole thing, an effort to take everybody's attention away from what Hillary Clinton

did and what we know to be a complete hoax over this Russia investigation? What are your thoughts? Because I know Jake Sullivan worked for Hillary Clinton and he was one of the people who was peddling this Russia collusion lie for four years. And there he is now as NSA coming up with this hysteria over Russia. They're scrambling. There's no doubt about it. Okay, so Senator Tommy Tuberville being asked by a host on the Fox network, if all of, because you may not know, what they were talking about there was the Ukraine-Russia conflict. So was, the idea that there's a situation with Ukraine was invented to protect Hillary Clinton from

revelations in a legal filing that wouldn't happen until weeks into the conflict. That is some nefarious stuff right there. So Vladimir Putin sent all those troops on the Ukrainian border in order to distract from the Hillary Clinton probe, which isn't even called the Hillary Clinton probe. That seems, I don't know, call me crazy, but that seems a little far-fetched. I feel like Vladimir Putin as a Russian nationalist has his own reasons for wanting to bring Ukraine back into the fold as far as the Russian oligarchy is concerned without involving the likes of Hillary Clinton failed presidential candidate of 2008 and 2016. I think so. So look, it could be what you just presented right there.

It could be that Putin for some reason is helping his old friend, Hillary Clinton. Or maybe, let's be fair, devil's advocate. It's not that Putin sent the soldiers there. It's just that that's why, what, like the media's focused on it and Biden is focused on it? Well, this is an interesting game that they bring up. If we can postulate that the fact that some in the media are concerned about possible war in Eastern Europe is just a convenient distraction from what would eventually be revealed about Hillary Clinton. Well, two can play that game. Fox News. Suddenly, you've been talking about these protesters in Canada. Why are you so obsessed with these protesters? Are you trying to

distract from the Durham filings? Are you trying to get our eyes to be cast northwards? So we're not paying attention to the corruption and spying of Hillary Clinton? This is nonsense. This is all nonsense. Like, we can have whatever view we want to have about Ukraine and Russia and how Biden and the Democrats are talking about it and how they might use it to spend. a whole bunch of money. The idea that that should be also about Hillary Clinton was, can we, can we just never ever talk about Hillary Clinton again? Is that, is that a situation that we can set up here? Absolutely, I wish that was the case. And honestly, this latest round of Fox News idiocy makes me pine for the days of death panels. You know, you don't you remember

when Obamacare was going to, you know, set up these death panels where Democrats get to pick who lives and dies within America, who gets to have health care in this country? I missed the death panels, John. I got to say, look, I think you're right. I mean, look, obviously the death panel stuff was total misinformation, but at least when we were talking about that, we were talking about health care, like it was an actual policy. Exactly. Something. I mean, the closest we can get to a conversation about policy right now, since the Democrats and Joe Biden have apparently been asleep for like the last month. I was asking Edwin before the show, is the Senate in session or is it in recess right now?

Do you know for sure? They're not doing anything. Do you actually know if they're in session? Biden, is he on vacation? Is he on some sort of international trip for the last couple weeks? Wouldn't know. He's not doing anything. They're certainly not acting like they're in charge.

But anyway, the closest we can get to a substantive conversation these days is, I don't know, the possibility that a U.S.-based trucker protest could start to fight against the mandates that don't exist. Maybe we could get that, but that's about it. Anyway, look, if anything actually comes from this Durham report, any actual illegal behavior on the part of Hillary Clinton, I will be more than happy to discuss it. Because I don't love Hillary Clinton. She actually was no fan of Bernie Sanders, you might recall. But that doesn't mean that we have to just invent from whole cloth insane conspiracy theories to gin our base up into anger over a politician that has no legitimate reason to be even in the news cycle. right now. Any of the thoughts wise? I mean, she does have a legitimate reason, John. We talked about the merch yesterday. We need to keep that in the recycling. But her email's merch is just too classic. We can't let that go. I would like to. I would like to. Anyway, yes, those are apparently available somewhere. I will not be sporting one anytime soon. I like your hat. I'm glad that that is not a butter email's hat. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

With that, we're going to take our first break. Everyone, we'll take a look at some of your comments. When we come back, we've got some cops on hidden camera saying amazing things. And then we're going to get into a couple different aspects of students being drafted into the culture wars. This time, battlefield is Indiana. We'll have that for you after this. member joins me was great to have you here and great to be here john great to have you here everyone jank will be back later this week anna is off on an important assignment but uh everything will be back to normal very soon don't worry about that in the meantime we get to have a little bit of fun including a version of fun at least in this upcoming story which we're about to talk about now jack paulson works for the transparency organization tech inquiry and recently traveled to Rhode Island for a meeting of the National Sheriffs Association Conference. So at that place, he did some secret recordings of cops talking about a number of different topics.

Some in the area of like sort of petty corruption, others including bizarrely misogynistic comments. So we're going to get into a couple different parts of this. But let's start off with this video where he's talking with a representative from a tech lobbying firm, Axon. and a Rhode Island law enforcement officer. to be happening is that they are talking about setting up some sort of thing where they would take this lobbying rep out on like a hunting trip to potentially like get the trip in exchange for the sale of some products. If it seems incredibly petty, a petty way and a corrupt way to use taxpayer dollars, that is exactly what it is. That's what these conferences are for to link up

these sorts of operators to operate in anything other than the best interests of of the public was. And so when you get together all of these cops and different people who are desperately trying to get them to spend a portion of their bloated budgets, we can't be surprised if it gets into corrupt territory. Bloat is the first word they came to mind when I saw this story, just the idea that the cops can be lobbied, right? Because they have so much disposable cash, their budgets are so out of freaking whack that they can spend, you know, basically discretionary funds on state of the art tasers. Yeah. That's just insane. Like we're not talking about the necessary gear for police officers to be safe.

No, it's state of the art weapons to electrocute the hell out of the citizenry, John. And it's amazing because, you know, whenever we're talking about public funds, going to things like working families and, you know, just bread and butter American issues. We scrutinize these, these spends with a fine tooth comb and it's austerity this and tighten the belt that and bootstrap this. But police budgets, they can just get as out of whack as possible to the point where these guys get the most expensive toys possible. Yeah. And the exact sort of toys that you were talking about there. So the company that was involved in that conversation acts on produces tasers, smart weapons, body cameras, and other related tools.

And the conversation after that video did continue with the police officer saying, bring the chiefs up, I'll tell you right now, you might as well bring the contracts up with you, and it's a done deal. So I guess the hunting trip will happen, and I guess a deal will be produced as a result of that. Not, mind you, as a result of the superiority of their products to some other company or them presenting a better deal that saves the city or state money, why would those be the things that these contracts are decided on? In any event, in addition to Axon, there were a lot of other companies there who came to get some of that money. You've got places like facial recognition firm Clearview AI, automated

license plate scanner and surveillance camera company flock, social media surveillance firm data miner, which is a hell of a name for a company by the way, Verizon, and a host of of other surveillance technology corporations and police contractors. And look, obviously, police departments do need some stuff like this. But why wouldn't it become just a fun little fishing trip? Like you said, like just looking for fun toys, fun gadgets, when you have seemingly infinite money to spend in the area. Yeah, and I love how cheap a date these guys are, man.

Just one little trip out to the country and these guys are ready to put. out. Oh, how despicable. Yeah, 100%. It's, yeah, just like our representatives, they are bought so incredibly cheaply. Well, corruption wasn't the only thing on the menu for what was revealed by a tech inquiry. In another comment made near that same booth is the booth of Axon. A police officer said, quote, he doesn't take any blank either. If you're an illegal in his county, you better blank and run and hide because you're going to disappear. Well, that's good, right? That was the representative for Axon replying because the representative from Axon isn't going to let a little bit of casual racism stop a sale. No, no, you can't. Every good salesperson knows when the potential client says something problematic, you just roll with the punches and go home and complain about it to your significant other later because a sale has to be made.

But the idea that his contribution to that conversation was like, that's a great, that's a great thing, right? Like potential murder, kidnapped, disappearance of, you know, an undocumented person. Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, look, if I'm playing like full devil's advocate, I'm going to imagine that the axon rep isn't a fan of this sort of xenophobia, this murderous xenophobia. But he does know that he's talking to someone whose only personality characteristic is a desire to perpetuate. violence. So maybe he's just hoping to get through the conversation and move on with his day. That's if I'm being incredibly charitable. In any event, there was more that was recorded. So a retired chief of police was caught joking about law enforcement robots going into women's

locker rooms. He added that some law enforcement robots become immobile when women's bikinis get entangled in their drive tracks. That's a big problem. Elon Musk is going to have to work that out for his human bots, I assume too was. I don't even know. I don't even know what to say to that. I don't mind that as much, of course, because he's not talking about murdering anyone, at least. Right. But how is this the topic of conversations like, you know, panties of officers getting caught in dog bots? What a conference. I kind of want to go to one just for the people watching alone, John. Yeah, apparently they have more fun than we thought. But yeah, look, and we include that comment partially because obviously

the racism is also going to come with some casual misogyny. Let's not forget that. But also, Like, we can never forget these, like the people who are in charge, just because they have a big budget and just because they've been given power by the government, just because we've been told as we've been raised that they are authority figures and they deserve a respect, they are every bit to chuckleheads that everyone else in your life is with the same sorts of personality flaws and petty, like, desires to be like wooed and sent on trips and all that, a propensity to corruption and all that. they have all of this power and all this money. They are fundamentally just like us in all of the bad ways. Yeah, there's just no, there's just no separating them from anybody else that you come across in your life or in society, except these guys hold a disproportionate amount of power and influence and sway in the lives of the citizens who they are sworn to allegedly protect and serve. It's kind of crazy that this kind of knucklehead can ascend to. that level of power. Exactly. Yeah, again, it's not. Yeah, I guess we do see it a lot. Well, I want to give you just two more comments. So one was after, so Paulson for Tech Inquiry

who'd been recording this was eventually noticed to be recording someone. So sheriffs approached him, asked him to delete the footage. Let's see, one National Sheriff's Association member asked him, we've also had sheriffs come up to us and complain about being recorded in seminars. So if you have any recordings, I'd please ask you to delete them. And look, I don't know what the the rules are for this individual like event space. And I get why, you know, most people don't like being recorded without knowing about it. But demanding that it be deleted feels to me like admitting you know there's a good chance that something was said that shouldn't be. And this is just, these are relatively public events. Tons of people are there, you know,

reps for companies come, reps for different police departments. Why would there be a presumption of privacy or a desire for a high level of privacy coming from that. That just seems needlessly defensive. But to circle back again, even if there was an assumption of privacy, who needs it? If, you know, if everything you've ever done and said would be held up, could be held up to probably scrutiny with no problem whatsoever. Yeah. What's the big deal, sheriffs? That's, you know, it's the cops that's always like, what do you need a lawyer for? What do you care about being surveilled? are you doing something wrong? What's the big deal, guys?

Yeah. Well, I got one more for you, Waz. This is a fun one. So this is a, I believe, a retired cop and safe flight corporation contractor said, I think there's going to be a flood of money coming out because that's all politicians can do. They don't, they just don't have the mindset and the tools to deal with crime. That's what we're supposed to do. You're supposed to do. All they can do is give us money, particularly before the election next year there's going to be, it's just going to be an endless flood of money

so I look forward to that and I bet that they do. I know, I know everybody was like trying to defund the police and like oh budgets have been destroyed. How do I know that? Not because the budgets have been destroyed, but because cops have complained about it for a year or two, Oz. But it

actually turns out that they are, as they always are just flooding these departments with cash that they could go buy fun gadgets with. Look, and And if it was just a bunch of cops getting fat on OT, I really don't have a huge problem with that. But when you guys are spending the money on like military tactical gears and specialty assisted tasers, that's where you kind of just be like, it's your budget is out of control, obviously. And again, we don't have a problem with cops getting raises, cops racking up OT, having the best benefits. in every, any sector of the economy.

Police have some of the best health benefits, retirements, pensions. We love it. We want to see all of that. But Jesus, please lay back on the freaking G.I. Joe stuff. Exactly. That should not be too much to ask. Okay, with that, let's mix it up. This is fascinating. We got some great stories to close out this hour with.

In Indiana, as in many parts of the country, There have been efforts predominantly by right wingers to stop certain things from being taught under the rubric of opposing critical race theory, but going obviously way beyond that, since these sorts of generally middle and high schools don't teach critical race theory. Books have been banned, authors have been banned. But it's almost worse than that in the area of not explicit bans, but schools becoming so worried about bans that could come, attacks that could come. National coverage from places like Foxx. news that might shed a bad light on them or open them up to harassment by teachers, that they are now beginning to sort of opt into this. Before they're even required to comply with right wing cancel culture, they're doing some incredibly weird things. And we've got an example of that coming from Sprunika Elementary School in Nineve, Indiana. So they've made what I feel like is an unprecedented change where Black History Month lessons can be opted out of. And we know this thanks to the leak of this letter, which will show you a shot of, and then we'll

give you a little bit. So that goes out to the parents, and obviously a parent needs to sign this. So in it, the school counselor, Benjamin White, explains that he will, quote, be coming around and teaching lessons related to equity, caring, and understanding differences. It says that these lessons will occur during the weeks of February 14th to 25th, and that these lessons can provide a great impact on students and help facilitate a better environment for all. So seems very positive towards these lessons and using the opportunity of Black History Month to do this. However, if you would like to opt out your child for receiving these lessons, then sign the form below and have your child return it to the school to give to the teacher. And what sort of

environment have we produced where school counselors who seem to want to teach about equity and understanding and all of this stuff wise feel like, well, I have to at least give them the opportunity to opt out or it's going to become a major scandal. I mean, this is the snowflakey of the snowflakey as, but John, I'm not going to lie, I kind of want to go the other way with this. You know, how many years of black history and all the good it's done us? You know, all these years of George Washington Carver and the peanut, third good marshal, you know, the first black Supreme Court judge, it's done us. What good is it done us? Maybe now when white folks find black history and they do so voluntarily, they'll actually get the real stuff.

Maybe they'll get some stuff about Paul Robeson, dirty, rotten commie that he was. He's a hero, though. I didn't learn about Paul Robeson in school. You know, you don't really learn about stuff like Marcus Garvey in school. Like, and so I don't know, maybe this stuff isn't that necessary anyway. Maybe John McCain in Arizona was on to something. Get rid of the holiday. Get rid of black history.

We're done, John. I love the casual John McCain under the bus in that segment. Well, look, if anything can. be allowed as long as parents are allowed to opt out was i would like to send you to neneva indiana and you can teach your version of black history that might have a stronger impact on these kids i would hey listen i would i would i would love to talk to these fools about the the n wa dr dr drey these fools made black history last month you know f the police that's black history to me john well okay oh hold on i i saw how people freaked out

out about the Super Bowl halftime show. I don't know what they're going to say about these lessons you're about to be teaching. Now I'm a little bit worried. Pam Greer, that's black history to me. There you go. We can get into that area too. Yeah, and look, we can certainly have a debate about the content of the classes. And like virtually every other aspect of elementary schools, I think that they can certainly be modernized. And we can question some of the ways that we do things. But I don't want counselors to be constantly terrified. And I don't want, like we saw a couple weeks ago, librarians now preemptively like going through their libraries and trying to find books that parents might complain about so they can get them out of there

so they don't get in trouble or fired. Like this is like they want you to believe that cancel culture is like the Dr. Seuss publisher being like, hey, we got these books that like nobody's buying. We're not going to do them anymore. That's not what a true cancel culture is. When you have librarians terrified of what people might be offended by some day. I feel like that's more in the area of an actual culture of canceling. Yeah, and I just love the idea that their kids should have a right to grow up without like feeling guilty about the color of their skin. Like, I don't know, you know, as a black person I can't really speak to or relate to white guilt, But is that how it works?

You just hear about like Thomas Jefferson and his slaves and you just automatically fall into a deep, dark depression of just like, oh my God, what was me? Why do I have to eat so much tuna cassero? No. I don't know. I don't know. There's something wrong with me, Waz. I thought this for a while that I'm not broken in the way I'm supposed to be. I don't take all of this incredibly personally.

Like I, I learned about white privilege and I accepted that it exists. And for some reason, I didn't fall apart. And I've never understood why. Why couldn't I fall apart too? You're not a good white, John. You're not one of the good ones. Oh, I'm told that online. Don't worry.

Anyway, Nineveh, get your stuff together. And by the way, I don't know this school counselor, obviously, but seems like wants to do the right thing. Like it's like, no, come on parents. Seriously, this would be really beneficial. You should totally do this. But fine, if you have to opt out, you can. Like, they're trying to create an environment where good people will not want to be in these schools anymore. And they will not want to have to go. They already suffered like innumerable massive obstacles to doing their job with basically no support, effectively no money. And now we're just making it harder, nebulously harder. Like you have to constantly be predicting the ways that they're going to come at you next. And they're, they're, they're, they're, they're like less well positioned in terms of financing and institutional support to accept that sort of environment than virtually anyone else. So anyway, the whole thing sucks. Journalists, documentarians, here's a free idea. Go back 15, 10 years from now and talk to the kids that were being shielded from critical race theory and just talking to be like, did it work? Like, do you feel great about being white now? Like, please, for the love of God, folks, calm down.

Well, and in any event, between now and then, just start fitting in little bits of critical race theory and black history into like random, like TikTok videos and stuff like that. Like in the middle of like a TikTok dance, like a Fortnite dance emot, just have them like mention the peanuts or something. Just make sure that people are absorbing at least a little bit of this. Anyway, I think the black guy made the yellow light too, John, if I'm the this is some of the stuff that I'm remembering from schooling about black history movies. It's just these arbitrary facts, dude. Like nobody was hurt in the process of that schooling. Oh, geez. Okay, we're going to take our second break.

When we come back, the U.S. failing another country in an incredibly fascinating way. You're not going to want to miss it. We'll be back after this. Welcome back, everyone. During that break, we were talking about a couple things. Just to clarify, Tuna C household, great, obviously not obligated. Not every household has to eat tuna casserole wise, don't worry. But more importantly, perhaps, there was a question from the audience about a supposed

cancellation of $450 million in student loan debt. From our quick research, it appears that that might be an old story from last year. There have been a couple rounds of very thin slices of student loan cancellation, generally in a few specific categories, not broad-based relief of student loan debt for the millions and millions of people who hold it, unfortunately. So until we get that, we'll keep pushing, but thank you for letting us know about that story. In any event, Waz, you ready for some more news? We're about to go international. As go, let's do it.

It's going to be fun. Also historical, so even more fun. Okay. Earlier this year, the State Department, remember Joe Biden's State Department has effectively announced that they will continue to turn their backs on the people of the Marshall Islands, who many decades later are still dealing with the long-term effects of the U.S. conducting nuclear tests on their soil. So we're going to catch you up on the history of this and talk about what could potentially be done in the future. But first, we're going to give you a little bit of context and a little bit of history. So we're going to show you a map. And on this map, you're going to see a little red dot there. That's the Marshall Islands. You'll notice very far from the United States,

which is important in a couple of ways in this story, probably. explains why the U.S. decided to do what they did there of all places. In any event, the U.S. originally took the Marshall Islands from its previous occupiers, the Japanese, way back in 1944. Almost immediately, because the U.S. wanted a place to test nuclear weapons, they evacuated the population, and then, over the course of a little bit more than the next decade, detonated 67 nuclear weapons there, which is just amazing when you think about it. Like we know that tests were done, but dozens and dozens of explosions over a very small area of land were conducted. One of them, by the way, was called Castle Bravo, the largest artificial detonation, the largest nuclear test of this sort that the U.S. ever conducted for scale, it was 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So first of all, Wads, that is, I don't even know what that is, a thousand, that's the worst thing that's ever been done in war. And this is 500 times worse than both of them combined. So the idea that we were doing that is just madness, first of all. Any thoughts about that? I can't say that I'm at all surprised, especially when you think of that period in time when it comes to US foreign policy, where it's just like we kind of get to do what we want to do. indiscriminately. I'm not at all shocked by that. Yeah, well, just I want to give. How much has changed, by the way? Yeah, thankfully not as much of that specifically, but I mean, we're dropping conventional

weapons in absolutely massive quantities up until today. So this was a description at the time of that particular test. There was a huge, brilliant light that consumed the sky. We all ran outside of our homes to see it. Soon after, we heard a big, loud noise just like thunder, and the earth started to move. Toward the evening, our skin began to burn like we'd been out in the hot sun all day. The next day, the problems got worse. Big burns began spreading all over our legs, arms, feet, and they hurt very much. Many of us lost our hair.

So that's the immediate response to one of these tests. Well, long term, it has had an effect. All of the tests in total have. Those living on the Marshall Islands still suffer disproportionately high rates of cancer. thyroid disorders, still birth, including what are nicknamed jellyfish babies because they're born without bones and congenital birth defects of a number of different sorts as a result of these tests. And by the way, eventually, after all of the testing was concluded, the U.S. did a little bit to clean up the situation. So they cleaned up contaminated soil on the enawaitic

atoll, where the United States not only did a lot of these weapons tests, but also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests, and took 130 tons of soil that had been irradiated in Nevada and transported it all the way over to the Marshall Islands to be dumped there. They then basically locked it under this dome, sort of a massive concrete coffin called the Runit Dome. That holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet or enough radiated soil and debris to fill 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools, as well as large amounts of plutonium as well. And maybe at that time, locking this in like a big concrete bubble seemed like enough, maybe, but it's been a long time and it is no longer working. It is already leaking into the ocean, causing the bleaching of

coral, killing fish, causing massive algae blooms. And that's just right now. But you might recall that we live in a world where not only we do these large-scale nuclear tests, But we also don't give a damn about the fact that we're ruining our climate. And as a result, one of the consequences is that oceans are rising and eventually they will swap this dome and we can only imagine what's going to happen as a result of that. Tides are creeping up at sides, the actual sides of this dome advancing higher every year as glaciers melt and oceans waters rise. And so the fear is that the leaks are bad enough. But if eventually the entire thing is inundated by the raising sea levels, that God only knows what could happen. happen worldwide if all of this massive amount of irradiated soil and debris is just free flowing into the ocean was.

Yeah, the damage is basically incalculable. And you know, obviously there's the damage that's been done right now to these people's lives and the environment around in, which they depended on, right, to support themselves and sustain themselves. Obviously, there's that obvious damage, the psychological damage. You can't put a price on some of this stuff. But as far as restitution, I really truly believe that America would not pay restitution to these folks because they know that there would just be an endless line of people and countries and places of being like, yeah, hold on, you must did some extremely harmful and ruinous things where we live as well. where's our restitution, which is why I don't think they'll ever make these people whole again. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a great point. Like if you're living in one of the parts of the world where mines that we drop during various conflicts are still there and still kill people, or if you're one of the people being affected by discarded, depleted uranium that we've used, or if you've

been at the receiving end of not only weapons that we directly produce and then drop, but the massive amount of weapons that we sell to other countries that then use these things. Yeah, I can see that getting pretty huge. So they do want to avoid that. In this case, we are supposed to legally provide for monitoring and some sort of ameliorative response in the areas where we conducted these tests. That's supposed to be the case. But as I alluded to in the intro, the State Department is weaseling out of this in a number of different ways. Now, thankfully, there are some representatives that are watching this. So Representative Porter and Grahalva have been looking to this and trying to pressure the State Department to do the right thing. So they point out that the State Department

claim that because certain monitoring programs have lapsed, the U.S. no longer bears any responsibility for that dome, its maintenance, and all of that. The State Department refuses to consult with the Republic of the Marshall Islands on extension of these laps monitoring programs as required by our bilateral agreements and U.S. law. And maybe this is something that like we would just take as, you know, one weird bit of news under Trump, not surprising in any way. But this is Joe Biden. He's supposed to be the great unifier that's going to like heal the world's soul and all that. These are people that were incredibly mistreated. He didn't do it, but he is in charge of the country that did. And so he should feel the pressure, not just from people like representing

of Porter and Grahalva, but all of us. We can and should do something about this. It's going to cost billions of dollars to fix and potentially move the material to make sure that that dome doesn't utterly fail. That is an impossible amount of money for the Marshall Islands to be able to afford in the short term on the scale that we're talking about. For the U.S., though, he just requested his new defense budget. It's a tiny little fraction of that. And it actually would make us safer. This is not some pure hypothetical about how to ward off a Chinese invasion of California, the oceans are going to swamp that dome. It's only a question of when. So this could actually be a real defense portion of our defense

budget wise, but we'll have to see if they actually feel the pressure and do something about it. You mentioned unification, and I'll say this, Joe Biden's administration is absolutely unified with the Trump administration as far as their foreign policy posture. There's basically no daylight. between the two regimes as far as the Trump and the Joe Biden. They basically taking the exact same stances. In fact, some of Joe's have gone even further in the militarization or hawkishness nature of those stances. So yeah, Joe Biden being just like Trump on foreign policy has basically been part of the course so far. 100%.

I mean, definitely financially, in his first military budget, he raised the budget. He's doing it again now. I think in total it's something like 30 billion additional dollars per year over the course of those two raises. He didn't ask for it. Yeah. And by the way, we ended a war in the meantime. I didn't realize that not fighting wars was so damn expensive. I guess I should have been taught that in elementary school was. Yeah, I mean, listen, man, Halliburton ain't going to Halliburton by itself. Okay. Lockheed Martin, they got to keep the lights on somehow. And the way to do that is via the military budget, which is basically a welfare program for those type of companies. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good to see some representatives standing up, you know, against this.

But a lot of representatives, they love getting that money coming in, reallocating it. It's a frustrating situation, an ongoing war of our own. In any event, we're running low on time. So I want to make sure that we get to this last story because it's an important one. So with that, let's jump into this. For a solid week or two now, Fox News has been standing in solidarity with the truckers of Canada, implying that they just care about the salt of the earth workers and saying promising in effect that if a version of that protest starts here in the U.S., if truckers decide to fight against mandates or whatever, they will again stand with them.

They're bringing on organizers who are trying to get something like this going. said for some time now, well, what if the truckers had other goals? What if the truckers were organizing for something other than just not getting vaccines, if they wanted higher pay or greater benefits or safer work environments? Would they actually acknowledge those sorts of protests? Well, that was presented as a hypothetical, but it doesn't have to be. It turns out, actually very close to where we're broadcasting right now in the port of L.A., there is a trucker strike. And so far, I don't see any coverage about Fox News on it, but what they're trying to fight against is actually pretty bad. So it involves a company called XPO Logistics, and we want

to get into a little bit about how they're being treated, the nature of what they're fighting against. We're to start with this video. The company is a company miserable, that no has a, a, a, a, a, a, a sense human It is heartbreaking. I have seen drivers show me their settlement statements or in any given week they may have owed money

to the company. In other words, it says negative $200. In a day permedio of 12 to 14 hours, probably four hours or five hours that don't us pay. They have worked a 40, 50

hour week, but because the deductions for their truck payment, for their repairs, for their maintenance, For their insurance, that week, was more than they earned. They owe money to the company. My experience that I've worked in other companies as a employee, we've got the benefits, as it as a disability or disemployer. We pay insurance social and for that we have a retirement in the VG's of the

security, that this company not does that opportunity. We're sanctioned, they're not, they're going. So in the practice, we're employed but in the scheme of contractation, that is the endangue, we're

independent, according the company. So, you can probably notice a little bit of a pattern there in the nature of the mistreatment. Not, you know, setting aside, of course, that truckers who are actually classified as employees probably have quite a few grievances of their own.

In this case, what we're seeing is effectively what we're seeing in a lot of different segments of the society. Massive, profitable corporations are refusing to acknowledge that their employees are actually employees so that they can mistreat them, pay them less, and deny them benefits. And you almost can't exaggerate how many different ways they are screwing over their employees who aren't employees. So according to the National Employment Law Project, overall, drivers that have been designated, or they'll say misclassified, because this is not how it's supposed to work, As independent contractors earn nearly 20% less than those that have been designated as full-on employees.

And the overall money that they're getting paid again, remember, these are the people that Fox has been saying are absolutely crucial. Remember how angry they were at the backup at the port of L.A., how products weren't getting in? Well, these are the workers working overtime to make sure that these profits go through. They earn something like $35,000 for driver employees and less than $29,000. thousand for independent contractors. So low pay is the ground floor for the ways that they're being abused. But as I was pointed out by multiple drivers in that video, they're not only denied fair wages and job protections. They also lose out on payroll taxes, get stuck with the cost of unemployment, disability services, worker compensation. Law-abiding employees have to compete with

rivals operating on the cheap. So if you have a company that is actually hiring drivers as employees, they're going to lose out to those that are effectively gaming the system to have sort of fake independent contractors as a ruse to not have to pay them. And so they don't get retirement, they don't get health care coverage, they don't get reimbursement for work expenses. They typically work a 90-day renewable contracts, which means they can be effectively fired at will with no recourse against effectively arbitrary treatment from the companies like XPO. So this is a bunch of workers. Again, salt of the earth. heroes working during a pandemic to make sure the products we need are distributed was

where's Fox News where is their outrage I mean yeah I'm I'm old enough to remember when we hated you know welfare queens and people that sit on their lazy humps and the people that get up every day and do some of the hardest most important jobs in our country were the heroes I remember when that was the messaging coming out of the right wing but I guess things have changed but what I will say is obviously Bravo for these workers. The independent contractor designation is not just a financial one. They wanted to have a psychological effect. They want you to think that it's you versus the big old scary company. And no worker in their right mind could ever think that they could take

on a corporation of this size and this scale. So, you know, they know what they're doing. And I do want to say this too for people to understand how widespread this practices. I happen to know some friends that worked at companies like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BT, all under the Viacom umbrella. And Viacom, like, it doesn't get much bigger and, like, richer than Viacom. They were practicing in this, too, okay? Like, firing people at the end of the year so that they don't meet the minimum work requirements for certain benefit packages, et cetera.

Yeah, Souther Redstone, he was one of the pioneers. of this dirty rotten practice. So just imagine they're doing this to people in cushy, creative industry, white collar jobs. You already know what they're going to try to do to blue collar workers. Yeah, and they're doing it. And in California, California state where there is always money to crush workers, to force them to operate as independent contractors. We don't, you know, we haven't forgotten the ballot initiative from last time around. So in this case, XPO has gone to the National Labor Relations Board and said, you have to deny this petition to unionize because after all, they're not employees.

They don't get to unionize. They're independent contractors. Well, with all those obstacles and at the risk going slightly over, I want to go to our last video, which gets into how those contractors are trying to fight back. So even under the most stringent of employee status standards, these drivers have been found to be employees. So it is clear, the writing's on the wall. XPO may try to fight it, but these workers are going to win their right to a union election. And based on what I've seen, they're going to win their right to a union and a good, fair contract. Always

They're the custom of intimidar us That we're going to To be there's going to go To go to the job to other No We're not, we're indispensable in this industry Of course we can't

See the ports How are full of That no chofferes Only that they want They want to robes More money than what we're For so my

Companeros, No, don't Mido There are to to ask respect, we have to exigirlo.

Why? Because they not going to offer to secure medical. No,

they're to come to an plan of retire. The company

I say that just observe what the law says, that

he has been he has been he has said, but now we

want to the law obliges to the company to observe the law and that only

only the multi, but that the So great work by more perfect union there, by the way. And hopefully was, hopefully this will work out in the right way. Yeah, obviously we're pulling for those for those homies over there at that company. And again, it's it's in line with some of the labor militancy we're seeing across the country, across industries. It's about the only positive sign in our economy, the only positive. sign for working people is what's been happening with all the labor militancy around the

country. It's dope to see. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And we're glad to hopefully get people interested in what's going to happen to them to shed a little bit light on it. My advice to those drivers would be if you want more mainstream coverage, have you considered being against vaccines? Maybe Greg Gutfeld will come out and profile you or whatever. I personally think you wanting to be treated with dignity and humanity and paid a wage commensurate with the effort you're putting out is enough for us to care about what happens to you. But not everybody agrees with that. In any event, Wazi Lambray, as always, it is great to have you on the show. Where could people watch more of your work? Of course, make sure you check out Waznia every single Tuesday

at 530 Pacific Standard Time PM, that is, on the TYT Twitch network. Obviously, if you have even a cursory interest in the NBA. You should be checking out what we're doing at the ringer.com, Ringer MBA podcast. And woke bros with me and Nandovila. I know there's a lot of jobs in work, but yeah, check it out.

You're busy. You're busy. Okay, and I'm on the damage report every day, including tomorrow with Jordan Ewell. But for now, we are going to take a break. We come back. Brett Arlick is going to be taking over, joined by Rivana.

It should be a lot of fun, so don't go anywhere. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free. members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.