The Young Turks - Sicko Sermon

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

You’re vital to our work. Support as a member: https://go.tyt.com/signup. CPAC panel recasts Jan. 6 rioters as ""the real heroes"" for ""putting their lives on the line"" after police started ""attacking the people."" Lara Trump says RNC needs to raise $500 million, sees interest in paying Trump legal fees. ""Something is totally wrong"": Matt Gaetz reacts to Alabama decision imperiling IVF. A North Carolina pastor sparks fury with a sermon saying he'd clear any rapist whose victim was a scantily-clad woman because ""a man's a man."" PGA pro gets unwanted tips from a man at the golf range in a cringe-inducing viral clip" HOST: John Iadarola (@johniadarola), Yasmin Khan (@YazzieK), Wosny Lambre (@BigWos) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! Thank you, Friday! Drop it like the attendance at CPAC. Welcome. Welcome one and all to the power panel here at TYT, but not just me, John Dorola. I am here. Thank you. Thank you. I love to be here. Also, Yasminalia Khan reporting from Texas. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it is Texas. Be careful what you say. You never know what that government might do. And Wastney Lombray. How's it going? Glad to have you here as well, as well, Was. I'm just always happy to be on the power panel. Well, we're very powerful today. He's demonstrating the power. Well, we've got some stuff that will require some power, some truly reprehensible individuals. We're going to get to that a little bit later on, including one of the worst religious leaders in America, I think. I think it's safe.

to say, we'll let you be the judge, dear audience. And we're also gonna be talking about a little bit of CPAC, you know, we felt bad that not a lot of people actually went this year, so we decided we'll at least discuss it a little bit. I mean, they're saying some crazy stuff about January 6th and everything. So that should be fun, also, of course, the debate over IVF. And so that's where we're gonna start in just a minute. But in advance of that, thank you everybody for being here.

Thank you to everybody who has been on an absolute tear when it comes to gifting membership. Obviously, TYT relies heavily on our members and you all have been delivering. So thank you for that. And if you want to hit the like button, share the stream, that would be great too. And then let's dive into the IVF and the political battle over it, starting with this. Do you have a reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on the fact that embryos are children? Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity to do that.

And I thought this was the right thing to do. But IVF is used to have more children, and right now IVF services are pause at some of the clinics in Alabama. Aren't you concerned that this could impact people who are trying to have kids? Well, that's for another conversation. Yeah, another conversation, like with a guy who knew what he was talking about, perhaps, or after I've been briefed by my handlers, what do you expect out of me? I'm only a 70-year-old man. Get out of here with these questions that I feel super confident to speak about until you provide information about what's really going on. Look, jokes aside, and Tommy Tuberville is like flailing to try to answer this.

He doesn't know what side of the issue he's supposed to be on. We'll return to him in his attempt to dig himself out of that hole that he's in. But the stakes are high because as the reporter alluded to, the Alabama Supreme Court did earlier this week rule that frozen embryos are now children. At least for the purposes of other states stripping the rights away from people who want to have kids, every other aspect of how that could potentially affect the tax law or anything like that, I'm sure they're not going to have them be children. But for now, many people, including in Alabama, are trying to figure out what does that actually mean for us, for

people who might be trying to use IVF? And already a number of clinics there are starting to pause their services or plan to potentially shut down. We're going to return to that. I do want to give you a little bit more of Tommy Toberville. He has now been told sort of what IVF is. So now maybe he's prepared to discuss this important topic. We need the people to have the opportunity to have kids. Senator, what do you say to the women right now in Alabama who no longer have access to IBM will not, as a result of this. What do you say to them? Well, that's a hard one.

It really is. It's really hard. Because again, you want people to have that opportunity. And that's what I was telling her, we need more kids. Yeah. So look, it's uncomfortable at this point to take a long time. to take a long, hard look at our elected leaders because we are, you know, we're raised and trained to believe that these are special people. After all, he's not just some yokel

congressman, he's a senator. He's part of the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in this world. And all he has to fall back on is we want to have more kids. So I know I'm supposed to be pro life, but that doesn't seem consistent. And I have no capacity whatsoever to quick think my way out of this hole. And so he supports it, but not. He wants more kids, even though it's going to stop people in that state and potentially outside of it from having kids. It's an absolute mess. And we're going to talk about sort of the reality on the ground of it. But I want to start with you, yes, give you an opportunity to weigh in. What do you think about this? Yeah, whenever these stories come up, I never really know how to respond.

It's kind of like as a woman. I know we're going to talk about Matt Gates in a little bit. And I really just don't care what any of these Republican men have to say about issues regarding reproductive health. And this is such a funny, albeit infuriating story for me, the Republican Party, which is run by these very, very old men, as you pointed out, they have a branding problem, it would seem, and they have a messaging problem. They literally don't even have a political agenda right now, apart from just doubling down on these very culturally divisive issues. issues like this one, specifically Roe v. Wade and the overturning of all of that, they have proven to be unpopular with voters. The Republicans are literally losing female voters right now, and it's over things like this, but they don't really have any other way to pivot out of the hole that they've dug

themselves. Moss. Yeah, it just seems obvious that this is a move that was made in that Alabama Supreme Court to sort of placate the, I guess we're still calling them evangelical right, right? These religious leaders, quite frankly, because it can't be for the constituents. The idea that you want to ban in veto fertilization for couples who are having trouble getting pregnant, like it's absolutely insane. And it contradicts his stupid talking point. Like his own ridiculous talking point is being contradicted in real time.

And again, they do have a huge women problem, particularly education. educated women, and the idea that they would be coming out and stumping for this, but mind you, while Joe Biden and the Democrats are floundering out there that the Republicans would just shoot themselves in the foot with this, it's just crazy to me. Yeah, so much of this feels deeply crazy. I agree with you both, yes, I agree with you, why is all of this going to come down to what these like old Republican men think when what is truly important is what slightly younger Democratic men like me thinking.

So I'm gonna start talking more about this. But no, I'm kidding. I at least care about the effect it actually has on people. And I care enough about these issues to like know what the thing is. But again, as I said, like we have to take a long, hard look at who actually is elected to these positions. The people who are tasked with like huge amounts of political power are deeply unintelligent and incurious people.

That's just what they are. They don't need, they don't feel the need at all to understand science, how it applies actual people's lives, he knows as little about IVF as Marjorie Green did when she said she doesn't think masks would work because if you fart, it goes through underwear. These are stupid people, they're powerful people, but that doesn't make them intelligent. People often complate those two things. Same thing with intelligence and money, we're coming to learn, especially in the age of social media and Elon Musk never stopping talking that those things don't necessarily

go hand in hand. But as I said, some facilities which provide, I services are pausing those in Alabama while they try to figure out if maybe they'll get thrown in jail if they do these procedures. One of the doctors, a fertility specialist at one of the facilities said, we made the impossible decision to pause new IVF treatments at our center, which is devastating for our patients and the state. Our legal team is telling us that, as the ruling is written, that modern fertility treatments cannot continue in the state of Alabama because of the risk to physicians and embryologists,

given that embryos are now considered children because I just add this to the pile of issues in which doctors, people who want to have kids, elementary school teachers, librarians could end up being locked up because some maniac with a Bible in their hand thinks that their misreading of an ancient religious text should stand in for an actual understanding of the issues or compassion, basic decency, those sorts of things. And so we're gonna turn to some of the people that disagree with this. Yes, what do you think about like this uncertainty? And I know already some states are trying to use, like Florida, there's this effort to stop a bill, a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution. They're saying,

well, that potentially should be blocked because hey, look, now there's this precedent that embryos their children. So clearly there are Republicans trying to use this elsewhere. This kind of reminds me, I think it speaks to a much bigger problem that we're having in this country where there is no stability and there's a lot less reliability, right? So when it comes to people trying to plan their lives out, that's very, it's becoming very difficult to do. I personally, I'm a woman who I'm at a point of my life where I probably could have frozen my eggs a few years ago. Family planning is such a personal thing, right? And just had the idea of having these Republicans and these people who have beliefs who are different from mine, different from a lot of peoples in this country coming in and saying, no, you can't do this.

It doesn't feel like the country that we were raised in, right? In this country, we were told, you know, you have to be proactive about a lot of things. You know, think about the job market. You think about retirement, things like that. All these things that we've been taught to plan for. Now, everything is just very up in the air. It's very unstable. And Republicans are talking all the time about how.

millennials don't want to have kids. Millennials aren't buying houses because it's scary. It's really scary to enter into a mortgage or to enter into a marriage or to have a child. And then, you know, maybe you get laid off from work. Maybe you lose your job. Maybe the economy goes bust and then you have to work for the rest of your life. So there's a lot of uncertainty and this is just another aspect of it. I might have gone off on a tangent there.

But that's really what it, what it feels like to me. And that might be a personal thing because of where I am in my life. Yeah. Yeah, I just think folks need to really understand that how do we get here, right? This is a very long project on the part of movement conservatism, which, you know, essentially gets its starts in the late 60s, early 70s, with these free market fundamentalist, sicko, you know, Milton Freemanites, right? And they went out looking for a constituency to be the animating sort of force behind the conservative movement. because let's face it, free market economics trickle down, it's not really all that appealing. So what they did is that they started partnering with the Christian conservatism, right?

With these evangelical types, because they actually did have institutions. They actually did have a constituency and they've been playing footsie with them for decades now. And finally, you know, back in the days, they would just pay lip service to this traditional family values and we love Jesus type of stuff. But these bills are coming due. They have to actually deliver for these religious right types. And that's what you see in the Supreme Court. And that's what you're seeing in the highest court in Alabama. These bills are finally coming due for the conservative movement.

Yeah, and there are such different ways that you're talking about long term how conservatives view these issues. Like there are such different paths that they could have hypothetically taken. And maybe we'll see they're scrambling as you saw with Tommy Tuberville that they can take on this issue. So there is what you might think of as a more sort of like base focused, or populist version of this, which is that you could acknowledge that IVF services are, it's miraculous that it works at all, but it is still restricted to people of means. It's incredibly expensive and time consuming. And even if you're lucky enough to have insurance, it's extremely unlikely to actually pay for

any of it. So what if they set up some sort of national program that helps to subsidize IVF? So that poorer people who desperately want to have the kids that Tommy Tuberville knows, even if he knows nothing else, he knows that they want us to have more kids, could have access to it or no interest loans that families can pay off for. You could do that. Instead, they went in what I would term the elitist approach to this issue, which is they ban it so that they can feel pro-life, but it's not banned for everyone.

It never is when it comes to reproductive access, technologies, procedures. If you're poor, it's banned for you, but what do you think? Like a rich person in Alabama is just gonna be like, ah, it's banned here. Shucks, I guess there's nothing I can do. I couldn't, you know, I can't travel across the country or to a different country easily. They'll always have access to it, sarcasm aside. So they decided to go in the elitist route, which is poor conservatives who might desperately want to use IVF or related services, which might be under the gun next, will not be able

to, but the wealthy as always will still have access. Now that said, we obviously disagree with this. Some Republicans do not agree with the new right turn against IVF. We're gonna give you a little bit of what Matt Gates has to say about this. The Republican Party cannot be the party against family formation. And when we're at the point where we're confusing, like families like those you just had on with abortionists. Like something is totally wrong.

People who want to have a family should have the government and the law on their side. And the notion that discarded embryos in IVF somehow turn these people who want children and want families and want the American dream into criminals is really wrong. So for those in the Republican Party and the pro-life movement, as they describe themselves, who say that this is necessarily the next frontier, they're wrong. Pro life means being pro-IV. You're always going to find me on the side of family formation, not against family formation. I believe the Alabama legislature ought to amend their law so that IVF can occur safely in the Yellowhammer state.

Yeah, and he's right there. As he sometimes is, Matt Gates occasionally is right. He very rarely actually like analyzes the way that he's right and how it should potentially affect other things that he thinks. So for in this case, he's talking about that, you know, the government should be on the side of those who want IVF. They should also be on the side of people who want abortions because many of those people also want to have children, want to plan families, just not necessarily when they're 17 or whatever or when they've been sexually assaulted. So again, there's like a level of understanding, a level of empathy, But then it eventually hits the wall.

The wall is only ever placed so far from them. But in this case, he's right, and he's not alone, Kelly and Conway has been warning Republicans that they should not back bans or limitations on IVF. And you might think, well, why would she have already known to be advising them in this? Remember, right-wing pundits have been saying they want to come for IVF and surrogacy and birth control and the ability to choose who you marry for years, okay? They were never going to be placated by Roe v. Wade, so there were certainly warning signs. So she was right and now probably to ward off some of the damage that's going to be done to his presidential bid

by the fact that he helped kill Roe v. Wade. Donald Trump has actually weighed in. And on the topic of IVF, he had this to say, under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers have babies, Not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every capital estate in America. He goes on to describe accurately that the overwhelming majority of people who aren't religious loons support these. It's an incredibly radical position to be against this. And he goes on to call the Alabama legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution. And then he goes on to say that IVF is an important part in life

and we want the ultimate joy in life. And I get where he's coming from because he's clearly a guy who draws so much pleasure from interacting with his children. He seems to deeply love them on a fundamental level. But look, jokes aside, they're all right here. Matt Gates, Kelly and Conway, Donald Trump, I mean, they might be cynical. They might be doing it for political reasons. But at least they're advising Alabama to back off.

And that seems like a good strategy to me. Was, what do you think about that? I mean, yeah, this is just. just an obvious wrong here, but I'm only slightly tickled because of the fact that, you know, we spend a lot of time in the discourse right now talking about democracy and the threat to democracy. This is democracy working for Alabama. The Republican Party is completely hegemonic over there. They do whatever the hell they want within state politics over there. And their constituents are ostensibly getting what they asked for. This is what they voted for. This is the

people whom they've empowered. Obviously, it sucks that, you know, the most marginalized people in the state have no protections against this tyranny. But this is democracy, folks. This is democracy working in Alabama. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I feel for the doctors in Alabama right now, because it's like what I was saying earlier, there's a lot of uncertainty with a lot of these things. And, you know, whenever a state comes out with a law like this or any kind of ban or restriction, then immediately action has to be taken because if immediate action is been taken by a lot of these doctors and hospitals, then they're liable for whatever they do going forward. And I'm glad that you pointed out, John, how very, very fringe all of these anti-IV

people are. Even like Tommy Tuberville is extreme and very fringe, even for Donald Trump, even for Matt Gates, even for Kellyanne Conway. That is saying a lot. And I don't think that that should be overlooked by any means. And just the idea that someone could be so anti-science that something like IVF is seemingly not a good thing to them, it's really hard to wrap your head around. Yeah. Yeah. And it's incredibly French. I mean, it seems pretty common amongst independent right wing media. They know as little about it as Tommy Toberville. And so it's It's easy for them to take up those positions. The judge, the actual Supreme Court justice, the chief of the Alabama Supreme Court,

if we were to have them do a quiz on IPF, how it works, what it means, does anyone think that this person would pass? I don't know what you're thinking, as hard to answer, I don't know anything about this judge. I've done research on the judge, you know who this person is? You might think, well, you know, they're on the Supreme Court of a state, they clearly have to be an intellectual or something, no, he's a jackass, he's an absolute religious whack job.

He goes on Q and on podcasts and he talks in his actual rulings about the holy wrath of God, which has the exact same level of connection to reality and the law as me basing my policy positions on my fear of the harsh stare of Soron or the hexes of Snape. It has nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with the real world. Like if you invoke your religious fiction in a decision, that should be it. You should be off the court, it's madness. I love sci-fi and fantasy too, but if I were in a position of authority and I used like a quote from wharf in a decision, I would expect that that would be my last day on the

court and we should have the same expectation for this absolute madman who believed that he could single-handedly take, well, not single-handedly, there was unfortunately more right-wingers on the court that agreed with him, but that they could strip away these rights without ever having any understanding of what actual effect that would have. Any final thoughts? Well, I'm reading Dune right now, by the way. I meant to tell you earlier, but it is interesting because I was, I told you I just started reading Dune.

I was thinking about this last night, how, you know, we're having all these conversations with these really, really extreme religious views and these views are treated in such a way that they're respectable within our government. And really, they shouldn't be because first of all, not everybody shares them. A lot of people don't share those views. And secondly, we act like we're such an advanced society, but the things that we say and talk about as a religious society, they're not very different from the things people were saying and talking about hundreds of years ago, you know?

So it's like, which one is it? Are we advanced? Have we made all these advancements in science? Are we better for it? Or are we still just, you know, in the dark ages, just imagining things? And I mean, I don't want to offend anybody who, you know, has some kind of reasonable religious ideas, but at the same time, it's like you need to be able to separate. You know, this is what's happening in the world. These are my beliefs, and this is what's governable. You know, these are

the things that we can use to actually govern an entire society full of people with different beliefs. You guys know I'm nobody's religious person. I'm pretty staunchly atheist. However, we live in a country that is extremely deferential to the religious beliefs and the religious whims of folks, specifically those who are of Christian persuasion. I probably think we could blame the damn Puritans for that. But this is the result of that, man. We show so much deference to people in their hokey-ass religious beliefs, and we let them go as far as possible with it, when in reality, you should be able to impose your religious nonsense on yourself, you know, and maybe even your freaking, your freaking kids, whatever. You want to indoctrinate your own kids into this

nonsense? That's, that's great. However, when you get in the position of authority and you are making legal rulings based on your crazy, wild religious interpretations, that's when we begin to have major problems. 100%. Yeah, yeah. And to be clear, following from what both of you said and what Yaz stressed, if you want to have the beliefs, that's fine. I know tons of Christians. I absolutely love. My favorite person in the world, my grandfather, who tragically passed, was a liberal Christian and his Christianity was actually attached to his value system. I have no problem with that. You can't legislate based on that. You can have it and you can legislate, but for good reasons. You can't, you can't do it for

that read. Like, I could say that I think we desperately need a universal basic income, because if we don't get it, then the great sandworms could rise up. But we don't get a universal So basic income, for that reason, I have to base it in something economic. That's all I'm asking for, really. Anyway, I am worried about the sandworms. I'm not trying to be flippant about that. But anyway, we're gonna take our first break of the hour. When we come back, we're gonna take a look at CPAC and surely things will become more reasonable at that point. Welcome back, one and all.

More news to come, no more references to Harry Potter. I make you that promise, maybe some references to Dune, but no spoilers please, I haven't seen the second one and I fell asleep during the first one. But anyway, with that said, let's roll into CPAC. The injustices are breathtaking and that's why our country is in such turmoil and people are upset and that the real heroes, I think, and it doesn't mean that no, let's just say, some of our real heroes were there on January the 6th, actually putting their lives on the line when they saw the police attacking the people.

So that is a panel at CPAC. The woman speaking is right wing radio host Sandy Rios talking about how the rioters on January 6th, those are the true heroes because they stopped the cops from attacking people. Why were the cops attacking people? Well, there was a riot going on. It could be related. I don't know, we'll look into it. And look, by the way, cops can go too far.

Cops can get too violent. Happens all the time. We cover it all the time. If you believe that that's what was happening, that none of it was justified, feel free to make that case. Sandy Rios does not make that case. What Sandy Rios is doing is what so many

right-wingers have done over the past few years. Just try to, in an evidence-free fashion, by rejecting what actually happened on that dark day, imply that they were the true heroes, rewriting history when we desperately need to understand that history to stop it from happening again. Now for context, on that panel, you didn't just have Sandy Rios, you also had former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark and Jerry Perna, the aunt of Matthew Perna, a participant in the events of January 6th, who, and this is where this turns even darker, tragically

took their own life after being prosecuted for participating in the insurrection of January 6th, though you can understand how she at least is going to take this very seriously, but this goes far beyond her feelings about her own family. Rios asked Perna if she was in contact with the families of other January 6 defendants. Perna affirmed that she did and said that a number of others have reached out to her about considering committing suicide, quote, they are pushing these people to the brink of insanity. And as we have said from the very beginning. Cops can go too far and imprisonment is not what it should be in America. There should be no solitary confinement. That's something that many of us at TYT have advocated

for for many years. Every once in a while, Marjorie Green goes and says that these particular prisoners should not be in solitary confinement. She does not want to extend it to a single person beyond that. The what she considers horrific conditions for those who tried to overthrow the results of an election are perfectly fine to put on the backs of literally anyone else and that's where we really have an issue here. Do you believe that there should be consequences for illegal actions or don't you? Look, not every single person that was near the Capitol on January 6 deserves to spend the rest of their life behind bars. And I'll remind you that generally the judgments have not been particularly harsh. But we also

can't pretend that it wasn't what it was, that this was not a group of people who firmly believed the lies they'd been told by Donald Trump and right wingers in the media that if they get in there, if they disrupt the certification, maybe a couple of Congress people get killed, maybe a VP gets murdered, that Donald Trump gets to be their king still. That is clearly what was motivating many of them. And the idea that they should just walk free because being in jail sucks, that's not convincing. That's just not persuasive. Yaz, what do you think? Yeah, this is kind of what I was talking about in one of the other segments. Yeah, the Republican Party has a discourse problem.

And I think the reason why they have this problem is because they are disingenuous. It's like if you're a liar, right? You have to lie even more to keep up with whatever the initial lie is that you told. So if you pretend to have a value system when you don't actually have a value system, you're going to run into problems when it comes to defending those so called values. And it's going to be very difficult to not fall into hypocrisy. And I think the Democrats, at least the progressives, I'll say, I think we are much more consistent in our messaging because they come from a place of value, right? We we understand the things that we're for. We understand the things that we will not tolerate, won't tolerate. And I think that's

why you see on the Democratic side, if Joe Biden does something bad, there are not Democrats on Twitter saying, oh no, he didn't actually do anything wrong. This is all Republican slander. The Democrats are probably the first ones to tell, maybe not the Democrats again, talking about progressives more specifically, but we'll be the first ones to tell you, you know, no, that wasn't cool what he did. And yeah, there should be consequences for it. No, we're not happy about how he's handling this. We're the first one wants to say so. Boss? Yeah, it's crazy because I'm actually hearing this woman called these people heroes is quite hilarious because I remember the summer of 2020 when we had our great racial awakening here in America where people were

pissed off about what the cops were doing. The cops specifically, I remember a couple of things. All the Hemming and Hawing from right wingers, the hush stones about these best buys that were looted in CVS. And it was the gravest thing that ever happened that people walked away with three minute made juice. It was just terrible, right? And back then, the freaking cops were a sainted group of people amongst the right wing. Like the cops could do no wrong. And any time people opposed the police. They were completely crazy and unhinged and, you know, it was the worst thing ever. However, these rioters, these quote unquote protesters, kill some cops in the process, damage all kinds of property, and we hear nothing about it. In fact, we hear that these guys are heroes.

And then again, I don't seem to remember progressives being like, well, you know, these guys that looted in the riot, if the police catch them, they shouldn't be prosecuted. to the fullest extent of the law. Nobody said that. But yet here we are with these right wingers calling a bunch of criminals are the heroes of the story. It's just crazy how that works. Yeah, exactly. Look, I don't know that a double standard does exist between those two, but I would argue that sometimes double standards make sense when situations are not the same. I love Best Buy. I'm not sure it's as sacred as the results of an election. Theoretically, the stakes here are different, so our standards could be different.

I'm not even saying they are. I'm just saying that they potentially could be. But I want to, I want to zoom out for just a sec to remind people that what's happening at CPAC, the attempt to rewrite what January 6 was is not a new thing. Like Donald Trump just earlier this month, he, obviously it was him that sent the rioters there. He blamed the riot on Nancy Pelosi, or maybe Nikki Haley, he's not sure who, and suggested that the rioters were not in the wrong by insisting that, quote, there were no guns, there were no anything except when they shot Ashley Babbitt.

And here is the thing. I understand that Ashley Babbitt is raised up as a martyr by all of these people. And it will never stop being weird to me that they are more mad at the people who are defending the Capitol as people were literally like World War Zing through the windows and doors, including Ashley Babbitt. She was pushing through a window. into a line of people who are holding guns raised. I don't know anything about everything that happened about that, but it seems like a weird course of action. They're more mad at those people than they are at Donald Trump for sending her.

It is indisputable that if Donald Trump had not lied to these people, Ashley Babbitt would be alive today. She is dead because of Donald Trump and people like him. And they're not mad at Donald Trump. They're not mad at any of them, even though he lied about the election. And he also, by the way, lied, I know the fact checking is utterly irrelevant in 2024. There were no guns, well, except for the guns, which there were, because there were guns. In fact, January 6 defendants have admitted in court to having guns on them when they breached the Capitol and others who were around the Capitol.

There was, in fact, a group of guys in tactical armor and AR-15s who confronted a group of cops and somehow lived through that experience. That's not always how it goes when it's not a group of right-wingers. And by the way, when they talk about there being no weapons, it was just a group of tourists moving through the Capitol. The Secret Service confiscated, 269 knives or blades, 242 canisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuckles, what a throwback, 18 tasers, six pieces of body armor, three gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, including baseball bats, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers. But I want you to bear in mind that simply because some of their weapons were taken away, you need to bear in mind that these people were creative, lest we forget that they tried to bludgeon the life out of cops with Trump flagpoles and fire extinguishers. And for some reason, there's no talk of the heroic cops defending our elected officials

as the life was being beaten out of them with a flagpole with a Trump flag on the end of it. So look, I understand it's probably pointless to try to wage this war, to get people to to accept reality, but that's what January 6th actually was. Super fast comment, yes. Yeah, I'm just tired of this conversation because this has been going on for three years, you know, and it is a bit of interesting political discourse because it's also consistent, inconsistent, and it's like what you were saying before. The Republicans have an issue with short-term thinking. So they will say whatever they need to say that is the most impressive and the most audacious at the moment just to get some clicks, just to get,

you know, people riled up, right? They'll say whatever they need to say that's convenient at the time, and then they'll just go to lunch. Yeah, I tend to believe, I don't think that we should be, you know, punishing these guys outside of whatever the law is, but whatever's on the books, we should be prosecuting them to the fullest extent of whatever is on the books for whatever crimes they committed. I mean, that's been my stance on the entire thing from the beginning. If you committed a crime and you got caught, they're taking you to court and you're finished.

And I'm completely fine with that. because it's a story that could end up being worth a huge sums of money to a certain individual. Let's jump into this. So some of you may have heard that I've had the great honor of being endorsed by my father-in-law, President Trump, to co-chair the Republican National Committee. I got some fans in here, okay. You know, they say that like the wonder has left the world, but miracles remain. Is it not insane that the most qualified person head up the RNC was a part of Trump's family?

I think that's genuinely insane. But anyway, that's Laura Trump, who is apparently getting into the, hopefully being the head of the RNC with a fairly specific mission. And it has to do with not with voters or with strategy or with candidates, but with money. And she's been very clear in her interviews that if she heads up the RNC, they could end up using hundreds of millions of dollars donated to the RNC to instead help Donald Trump with his legal troubles. Or sorry, maybe that's not her strategy, because it really depends when you ask her. Sometimes she's super open about it, sometimes not so sure. She did say on Saturday, we need to raise about a half a billion dollars between now and November 5th. We got to make sure that people understand when they donate their money, the RNC.

Indeed, it's going to go to causes that people care about, which I guess is Donald Trump, but is legal trouble? Anyway, we've got more of her. Take a look at this. We need to make sure that every penny of every dollar donated to the RNC is going to Donald Trump's campaign. What I can assure you is if I am there, I will make sure that every single penny donated to the RNC goes to electing Donald Trump. And again, extending our lead in the House and taking back the Senate. Here's what I can tell you, the R&C needs to be the leanest, most lethal political fighting machine we've ever seen in American history. That is the goal over the next nine and a half months.

If I am elected to this position, I can assure you there will not be any more $70,000 or whatever exorbitant amount of money it was spent on flowers. Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC. that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country. That's all well and good. Stay tuned for six months, maybe a year from now when we do a story about how much money she was able to extract from that organization for her own benefit. But for now, maybe she won't. And look, honestly, the idea that you would take over the RNC and take all of their fundraising and just throw it into the black hole that is Donald Trump's legal defense, I'm not even entirely sure is legal, but assuming that it is, I'm not

not even saying that that isn't what the Maga world would want. There's every reason to believe that they would be down for that. After all, they set up a GoFundMe for him that has already raised more than $1.1 million. Just from regular conservatives throw in a million dollars at a literal billionaire for the fraud that has already been proven that he committed. And so look, what Laura Trump is doing is fairly transparently corrupt, but that doesn't mean that that's not what the Republicans want. It also at the same time doesn't mean that that isn't really consequential for other Republicans,

because she can tack on to her interviews that also we want to take over the House. But if you're throwing that all that money into his legal defense, then you're not supporting candidates. And they have a two seat margin in the House. They desperately want the Senate. These goals seem inconsistent was. What do you think? They don't seem inconsistent for the Trump family. This is the grift that keeps on grifting. It just never ends. with these people. If there is a way to siphon money off of the Donald Trump enterprise and their relationship with Republican politics, they're going to do it. And I would submit this to you guys.

If you are grown up American person and you donate your hard earned dollars to the RNC, you deserve this. You deserve to have your money siphoned off by the greediest grifter that would, we've ever seen. I feel no remorse for these folks. If the party apparatus is cool with Donald Trump's daughter-in-law running that entire system, then more power to them. They get what they deserve. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really hard to feel bad for people who are buying Trump sneakers. But just real quick for some context, you know, the RNC, they want to replace Ronna McDaniels as the head of the RNC because the RNC is not raising money. They have a fundraising problem. They had the worst, worst fundraising years since I think 1993. And they only have about

$8 million on cash compared to the Democrats who now have $21 million on hand cash. And they pulled in less money than they have in previous years. And I think what Trump is doing now is he's saying, you know, this is a problem. The RNC has a problem. I'm going to step in and fix it. We're going to make the RNC even trumpier because I'm the only good thing going for the Republicans right now. One could argue that Trump is the thing that's costing the RNC money right now. All the Republicans know that Trump is a problem. They knew that he was going to be a problem back in what, 2015, whenever everybody from Lindsay Graham to Ted Cruz to Mitch McConnell,

we're saying if we let Trump take over this party, the Republican Party is going to be in trouble. And then they let that happen. And now he's trying to just take over the entire Republican National Convention. And so this is a problem for the Republicans. And I think if they allow the Trumps to take over the RNC, it will be very embarrassing for them. This is even worse of a gamble now than it was even back in 2015, 16, when Trump was first running for president in recent years, I'll say. But now he owes over half a billion dollars in legal reparations.

And we know that he doesn't have the money to pay any of this, right? That's not a secret. He had to ask a judge on Engeron in one of his cases for an extension to put up the money that he owed because he didn't have the money and he was denied that that extension because he never gave a reason as to why he needed more time to the judge. He just says, can we please have more time? And the reason why these legal fees are so high for him right now, the reason why he owes half a billion dollars in fees or fines, I should say, is because the entire time that he was on the stand in various cases is he stood there under oath and said,

I have billions and billions and billions of dollars. So they said, fine, if you have so much money, then we need to give you higher penalties. And that's why he's in the situation that he's in 100%. Well, there's more to come. Everyone, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back one and all to where it remains of the first hour of the Young Turks power panel. Stick around for the second hour. We got Ramesh in the house, we got Jordan, we got Jank, all at this desk, correct? That is, that doesn't often happen, you're gonna wanna see it live. Maybe they'll scream at each other, I can't make any promises, but the odds are pretty good.

Anyway, with that said, why don't we roll into a very serious story starting with this? I used to say this. I haven't said this a long time. You ready? I said, if you dress like that and you get raped and I'm on the jury, he's going to go free. Yeah, you don't like, do you? I'm right, though. I can't hit you're like it. I'm right. Because, you know, a man's a man, a man's a man. Dear God, well, he asked, you don't like that, right? And he was accurate in that part. I don't like it. I don't think a lot of people like it.

I don't like it coming from some crazed person you unfortunately are near at the bar. I don't like it coming from a pastor either. But that's who it is in this case. Pastor Bobby Leonard of the Bible Baptist Church in Monroe, North Carolina, who believes that if you are raped when you're dressed in a particular way, you should go free. That he himself would try to make it so that you go free. Okay, well, unfortunately, he has more on this theory. Take a look.

I told my wife, I said, Mama, when you go, when we go to Fission Forge to the outlet malls, when you go up town here, we'll go up and sit in the parking lot at the outland mall, I mean the mall here. I said, you watch it. I said, count them. You'll find more women going to have shorts on than you're with pants and dresses put together. And I sat there in my car. I thought, I'm going to see if that's right. And I counted. Try that. You'll find more women go in those places with shorts than you will women with pants and dresses put together. When I was a boy, 85 years ago, 80 years ago, I was raised in Martinville, Virginia, partly in on Boxfield, North Carolina.

You didn't, you never, listen, I don't remember women wearing anything but dresses. Yeah, it's strange how society can change over the course of eight decades. Anyway, that guy in addition to thinking that rape is allowable if the target of the rape is dressed in a way that he thinks is unacceptable, which to be clear means that they're wearing shorts, went to a mall and just counted how many women he saw wearing shorts. But we're the problem, not him. He's the normal one. Well, look, this could potentially be a problem for him. He is, after all, a religious leader. Sometimes there are standards for our religious leaders. And to be clear, that sermon, if it still counts as that, was apparently made back in August of last year. But it wasn't until this week that it was actually uploaded, that the video was found and uploaded so that people could know that this is what this guy actually believes.

And he apologized. We'll get to what passes for an apology for him in just a moment. But Yaz, I want to go to you. What do you think about this? I mean, like the whole time he was talking, I was laughing and I know that that's not the best response to something like this, but it's like, dude, just get over it. Like you saw women wearing shorts on a mall and that's what triggered all of this. And that's what you use as your reasoning to excuse something like rape. And it's very strange that these people don't understand that they are the fringe of society now, that they're the ones who are obsolete, that they are not in the majority, but they're the ones who have a pulpit. You know, he's the one standing. up there addressing a crowd of people as the authority figure there, as the leader, as the moral authority there. And it's very scary to me that people like this, you know, if he was on a jury, that would be very unfortunate for the woman who's involved in that case, assuming that everything was not going well for her. And it's scary because that's just kind of the reality of our judicial system that we have. I don't know what would be a better solution

for it. But I like to think that this guy would have been weeded out very early on in the jury selection process. Fingers crossed. Was. Well, clearly, John, this guy is a religious leader. He's a preacher, so he's got some biblical explanation for this. Obviously in his Bible, when Moses got the damn commandments out of the burning bush, right after thou shalt respect your parents or whatever, it said thou shalt hump anything that's showing a little calf like clearly there's religious basis for everything this guy said it's ridiculous it's just nuts and the crazy thing is we never see these people quoting the Bible quoting Jesus in service of anything that would actually help other people it's like you know feed the sick I'm excuse me feed the hungry

you know cure the sick help out the poor people they're never quoting the Bible or any of that stuff when it would be productive for the masses of society. This guy uses his perch, of course, to blame women when they experience what is the most horrific crime, a human being can experience short of death. 100%. And, you know, I mean, look, for the video and our commentary, anyone who has gone through that experience, sorry for this is triggering for you. It's way, way, way more people than it should be.

But I have to ask some hypotheticals to the pastor, because the pastor is not just a religious leader, you should know. He's also married. He has four kids of his own. He has many grandkids, according to his bio on the website. So Pastor Bobby Leonard, according to you, can people rape them? Can people rape your kids and grandkids? Sorry, under the condition that they're dressing like sluts. Can people rape them and then walk free? Or is it just random people that you don't have a connection to that you're just free to rape like it's the purge anytime you want? Again, like I hate to even throw these hypotheticals out there, but he didn't like say that to himself half into a bottle of whiskey. He prepared a sermon that he delivered in front of a running video camera.

He was really sure of his position. And so I just have some follow up questions, pastor. Who exactly do we get to rape for free in your mind? Now anyway, if you think that what he said was unacceptable, I want to reassure you. He has apologized and here it is on a sign, maybe put up by him. It says, I'm sorry for any hurt. I was wrong. That's it.

It could have been a tweet. It would be a short tweet and he's moving on with his life. Okay, hopefully people will not allow that to happen. And by the way, that sermon happened back in August of last year, what else might be on tapes from those sermons? Was this really out of character for him, different than anything else he'd said? People should start diving into some of those tapes, I think. Now that said, I want to just quickly go into a significantly lighter topic to close out the hour, for a little bit of a pallet cleanser for that horror, whatever ready, let's jump into this.

So that is a video uploaded to TikTok by, as you can see, Georgia Ball, who's trying to work on her swing. That's why she's recording the first place. And the guy says, you're doing it wrong. And she says, well, no, I'm actually, I'm like intentionally doing something. And he says, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're doing it wrong. And what you should know if it's not clear is that Georgia Ball is a professional golfer. And in fact, an instructor of golf, she knows what she's doing. doing, but she's also a woman like out there in public. So he probably knows better.

Look, obviously this is the sort of experience that I think a lot of people have had. Maybe not professional golfers generally, but this guy just felt like it was his job. It's not like she was asking for help, that she saw his swing and thought he's nailing it. How can I do that? She's just living her life by herself and he has to weigh in. Yes, what do you think? Yeah, you know, I feel like when people see clips like this, they say, oh, that's like, that's a thing that happens sometimes. It happens all the time for no reason, just for no reason at all.

And it's like a constant reminder that you can be doing something at such a high level, but just some mediocre man will just come up to you and be like, hey, maybe try this next time. Okay, whatever dude. So it happens all the time. That's my only point that I want to make with with us. Guys, I guess I gotta stop every time I see Anna telling her how to be a pundit, right? I've always got pointers for Anna about being a better pundit. I'm telling Kate how to produce the show. I gotta stop doing this, man.

I gotta stop running my yap and telling these professional women how to do their job, John. Wait, wait, wait, no, but that's, but that's helpful to them. When Anna's making a point, I interrupt her. That makes her better. Why wouldn't she want that? And look, I'm being sarcastic, but I'm already imagining, it is one thing if you're, if you're the random guy, come on, man, why are you doing that? You just like taking these spaces, and I know that you don't know that you're doing this,

but you're making people feel uncomfortable being there, which is why back when I used to work out at public gyms, when I saw a guy approach a woman there, I just thought, it's already intimidating enough in this space, back the hell off and just let her live. But as bad as that is, I'm already getting ready for the guys in the comments who are going to defend what that guy was doing and explain why you should go through your life, just looking for some woman who desperately needs your assistance. Just like when you when you leave the house, don't talk to anyone. That is my advice in every instance and it would have served this guy well. Any final thoughts? Yeah, if we want your advice, we'll ask for it.

That's it. Yeah, I think it's okay. If you see somebody at the gym and you don't like their form, fellas, just let it go. It'll be all right, I promise you. Yeah, if you see someone who's like got bad form, why is feeling a temporary sense of superiority not enough anymore? It's always been enough for me, just keep it to yourself and feel superior. Anyway, by the way, some of you, some people were responding to her and I'll close with this. Well, why doesn't she just say she's a pro? First of all, why does she have to go into her biology?

biography to be left alone. But she says, I wouldn't interrupt and say that I suppose it's just the humble side of me. For her, I trust her. It's the humble side. For some people in that situation, it might be, well, I don't know what I might say that might set this person off. They're already interfering with my life. And a person who feels like they can tell you what to do, that doesn't always not lead to more harassment or violence. So I understand. But then, John, if she would have told him that she was a professional, it would have went 180. He would have been asked. her for free swing advice. Okay, so either way, you damned if you do, damned if you don't, because then once she goes, yeah, I actually know what the hell I'm doing. I'm actually probably one million times better than you are. You'd be like, oh, okay, so now you can coach me for free. Yeah, see, like my response whenever things like that happens is I tend to just be like,

I would have said, hey, I'm a professional just because I want that guy to be like, oh, I don't actually know what I'm, what I'm talking about. Maybe I'll think twice next time, but I realize, that that's, you know, hopeful on my part. Very hopeful. Well, that's it, unfortunately, all the time we have for the first hour. Yaz, where can people see more of your work? Yeah, so my podcast is called Modern Context.

You can find me wherever you get your podcast. You can also see my videos on the Rebel HQ YouTube channel, and you can follow me on Instagram at Yaz, K-Y-A-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-K-5 Z's. Nice. Was the ringer.com where we have a lot of NBA, NFL, pop culture coverage, and of course the woke bros wherever you get your podcast with me and Nandovila. Nice. And I of course host the damage report. Some people like it. Not enough, but some. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's very high energy. Anyway, with that said, that's all the time

we have for the first hour, everyone. But don't you worry, Ramesh, Jordan, Jank, in studio after this. I don't know. But, uh, bork. Buhn't know. B. B.

I don't know.