The Young Turks - Sowing Discord

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

Episode summary: "We must prepare for war against China": Mark Levin gets raucous applause from Hannity’s studio audience. Pentagon leak traced to video game chat group users arguing over war in Ukraine. Ex-NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines posts video of confrontation with protesters. Twitter users are unable to retweet, like or comment on Substack links. Also, Substack users can no longer embed tweets in newsletters. America’s first dark money ballot line: The latest scheme to launch a centrist, third-party “unity” ticket comes from a dark money front for corporate interests. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Welcome to the Young Turks, Jake Ugar, Anna Kusparan with you guys, on a lovely afternoon in America. It's so warm outside.

Okay, well, that's easy for us to stay in LA, although it hasn't been easy. It hasn't been easy, the last three months in LA have been cold and raining. Yep. So anyways, all right, much love guys. We got a ton of a show for you guys, some controversies along the way. Let's have some fun. I don't know how fun you might find this, but let's do it. We need to prepare for war against China.

I don't mean go to war, I don't mean initiate a war, but they are preparing for war. We are completely unprepared as a nation psychologically. We are completely unprepared economically and immigration-wise and securing our border. This is what we put up with. It's absolutely unbelievable. That's it. I'm done. Yes.

Yeah. That animated guy who certainly looks like he's ill-prepared psychologically. His conservative talk show host, Mark Levin, who got a round of applause. on Sean Hannity show from Sean Hannity's live in studio audience. I guess that's a thing now on his show. Anyway, as he was calling for not necessarily a direct war with China right now, he claims we just need to prepare for war with China. Yeah, I've heard that before.

Yeah, so more war mongering rhetoric coming from right wing talk show hosts. And he's just one of many right wingers, which include people like Steve Bannon, who are very much in favor of drumming up war with China, which is ill-advised. I'll explain why in just a minute, Cenk. Huh, that's weird. I thought the right wing was against war, and that's why people like Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard were supporting them. Huh, it seems like they're massively in favor of war.

By the way, when you prepare, should you prepare defenses? Of course, you should always have defenses, right? But when you prepare for war, a lot of times you get war because of what you're doing. You're pushing forward, you're militarizing, you're antagonizing. But I want to just say, we do $850 billion a year for the defense budget, but we're not psychologically prepared. No, no, he also later will claim that the military isn't getting the resources it needs. We're going to debunk that. We've got the receipts.

But before we do, why don't we hear more from his hysterical rant? China hasn't built the biggest Navy on the face of the earth, military islands in the South China Sea, over 20,000. 27 bases of different kinds in our hemisphere, a deep water naval base in Somalia, where my great uncle fought on Guadalcanal. You have China with a base on the western coast of Africa facing us, killer satellites, nuclear missiles. You think they're building all that to defeat Taiwan? They're building all that to defeat us. They're not going to be satisfied with Taiwan. No evidence of that whatsoever, but it's meant to instill fear in the viewers to make them think that China's coming for us.

It's not going to stop with Taiwan. Again, not a shred of evidence proving that. Also, what do you think the United States is doing, has been doing for many, many decades in regard to building up its military capabilities? And is he alleging that China has built its military capability to an extent that it has surpassed the United States? because that would be a lie as well. Yeah, so they have satellites. They have nuclear missiles. They have a couple of bases across the world.

What do you think we have? We have more satellites, more nuclear missiles, and way more bases across the world. We're ill-prepared, Jake. We're not psychologically prepared, though. Okay, if we spent another $850 billion on his defense contractor friends, then all of a sudden we might be psychologically prepared. Does that guy look psychologically prepared for anything? Oh, come on, dude.

His head looks like a naval base that we've got off the coast of Africa, okay? Okay, so, but anyways, but the thing that I, look, I get it. This is old school conservatives. This is neo-conservatives. This is neo-consist, exactly, and Mark Levin has always been a neocon. He loved the Iraq war and he now wants to start more wars, but right-wing populace, where are you? Where are you?

I thought you guys were against war. So do you love Mark Levin or do you hate Mark Levin? Hey, Tucker Carlson, you pretend to be against war? There's Mark Levin on your network saying, well, you gotta war with China, like a frickin' lunatic. So look, this is a little bit different from the lead up to the war in Iraq, because in the lead up to that preemptive war in Iraq, the Bush administration was lying to the American people about how,

ooh, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and they're a real threat, an imminent threat to the United States. And that's how they decided to drum up support for that, illegal war. I mentioned that because that is exactly what Mark Levin is doing. It's a little different because it's not the actual government doing it. But if we had a right wing executive branch right now, would they be parodying that talking point, that ridiculous, unfounded talking point that China is preparing for a hot war with the United States? I mean, and look, to be sure, The Biden administration has used a lot of hawkish rhetoric in response to China in regard to

China. And I find that problematic as well because we should be de-escalating to the best of our ability. I think a lot of this is driven by economic competition and the fact that China's doing or growing economically much faster than expected. We help them do that by shipping our jobs over to China to exploit cheap labor. And now, oh my gosh, what did we do? All of a they're becoming more and more of a hegemonic force. With all of that said, I do want to go to the last clip featuring Levin because this is where he tries to make the case that our military under-resourced. Our military is not prepared in the sense that they're pushing this woke ideology.

Our military budgets do not reflect the threats that we are facing in the world around us. I want to say it again. So the backbenchers regurgitated. We must prepare for war against China. Not because we want war, not because we're going to cause war, but because they want war. They've only communicated it 10,000 different ways, whether it's violating our airspace, navigable waters, threatening our ships, threatening our country, threatening our people. What else can they do, short of attacking?

They're not going to be satisfied with Taiwan. This is a big damn deal. This is a big damn deal. I do not feel threatened by the Chinese government. I have never felt that they have threatened me or the American people. When Levin mentions how they, like, violated our airspace, I'm assuming he's referring to the surveillance balloon. Yeah, the one balloon, and then we shot down a whole bunch of balloons that weren't theirs, right? We showed them.

Yeah, a couple of kids' balloons. But so, look, there's two things that I like there. Number one, the lies that he made up, they're threatening our ships, really? That would have been fairly large news if China said, you know what, we're going to sink one of your ships. That would have been gigantic news, right? They're threatening our country. When? When did China threaten their attack us?

Europe nonstop threatening to attack them on national television, on America, on the largest cable news station. That we see very clearly. We have not seen Chinese state government. We have not seen their state media. We've not seen anyone calling for an attack against America. So Mark Levin is a liar. He's lying so that his friends who are defense contractors can get billions of dollars more

and stuff it into their pockets and rob the American people. And he said, oh, they're threatening our people. Again, lie after lie after lie to start wars, because that's what right wingers do. But that's the second part. He said, I'm going to repeat this so that the backbenchers can regurgitate it. So right wing populists who are anti-war, go ahead. Regurgitate his talking points like a bitch. Go ahead, he's telling you.

Go ahead, go back to being pro-war. Go ahead. Or do you disagree? No, no, you can't disagree with the right wing, right? Bow your heads. So a few things that I want to draw a distinction of. So it's nuanced. China is not posing a threat to the United States, at least in terms of starting a hot war. Now, is there some reason to believe that China could be making moves to take over Taiwan? There is some evidence to that. Okay, so for instance, Levin's remarks came on the third day of Chinese military drills that have been taking place pretty close to Taiwan. Taiwan, of course, is self-governing, but China does not want it to be autonomous. And so there is some concern that China eventually will invade and take control.

That is different from China posing an imminent threat or any real national security risk to the United States. I also want to address a few other things, including the military funding. His argument about our military is ill prepared, they're woke. I don't know what that means. He needs to be specific because just slapping the woke label on everything that you don't like makes zero sense and is not a strong argument. But in terms of military funding, let's look at this first graph that shows you how year after year military spending has gone up. Okay, so there was a little bit of a dip during the Obama administration, but that didn't last long. And if you want exact numbers, let's go to the next graphic where you will see that especially beginning in in 2017, right?

So we raised the military budget in 2017 from $639 billion to $646 billion. And then every consecutive year after that, consistently Congress appropriates more and more money for the defense budget. So how much, how many billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, do we need to reach a trillion dollars for Mark Levin and all of the other military contractors to feel prepared for a potential war with China, which we should do everything and anything to avoid? Okay, that should be the real objective here. But of course they don't want that. They want to drum up war with any country if it's financially beneficial for the defense contractors. The United States has also been selling military web, to China's adversaries and, you know, if you're, if the United States is selling weapons to places like Japan and Australia, you might get a little concerned about that. You might want to make sure you as the Chinese government and the Chinese military are prepared in case the United States does something. Yeah, so look, unfortunately, politics in America is black and white.

So here we're gonna do nuance no matter what anybody thinks. So number one, we don't think the Chinese government is our good guys, okay? So could they have bad intent towards Taiwan? Of course. Do they have bad intents toward the Uyghur Muslims that they have in concentration camps? Of course, right? Is it basically a dictatorship? Yes.

Does that mean we should start World War III? No, no, it does not mean that, okay? So if you're China, you might be a bad guy in regards to the concentration camps, etc. But as you see weapons popping up in Japan, Taiwan is surrounding you, right? What would you do if it was us? We saw weapons of our people who keep saying we're the enemy, we're the enemy, right? And all of a sudden they're funding missiles in Canada and Mexico and Cuba. Oh right, even just Cuba, we nearly started World War III.

That's exactly right. Okay. And Jake, let me get, it's important for you guys to know the specific details. We're not just pulling this out of, you know, whatever. Japan, for instance, an adversary to China. announced its plan to embark on a five-year, $320 billion military buildup to secure offensive strike capacity amid growing regional tensions. Japan faces the severest and most complicated national security environment since the end of World War II, according to the new blueprint unveiled

by the prime minister of Japan. It's a more conservative government, which named China as the biggest strategic challenge followed by North Korea. Where do you think they're buying the weapons from? They're by the weapons from the United States. Of course, the U.S. is happy to oblige. Japan plans to buy long-range weapons capable of striking China, including hundreds of Lockheed Martin's Tomahawk land attack missiles and joint air-to-surface standoff missiles, a boon for one of the biggest players in the powerful U.S. arms industry,

which is already poised to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in public money following Congress's passage of an $8.58 billion military budget for this fiscal year, 23. And that's not all. Same goes for Australia. Apparently, the U.S. announced its plans to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to northern Australia, where they would be close enough to strike China. So if you are the leader of China, if you are part of the Chinese government, and all,

the U.S. is making all these moves. All your adversaries are building up their military capability, what do you think you're going want to do. So it's, it's right now, it's really like an arms race. It's a bit of a cold war. And we want to prevent it from devolving into a hot war that's going to get innocent people killed. Yeah. So look, I keep getting in the face of the right winger. Steve Bannon had similar comments about how we have to be ready for World War III. So if you disagree with Mark Levin and Steve Bannon, say it. Say it. You guys aren't usually shy right wingers, right? So, and make up your mind. Are you against World War III? Like the Jimmy

Doors of the world who kissed Tucker Carlson's ass and right wing ass because he claims that they're against war. Now it looks like they're pushing for World War three. So are you against it or are you for it? Which one is it? We've been clear all along. We're against the war. We don't want World War three against Russia or China. We, and why do the right One of our members just made this comment, great comment. So the right ones are like, we can't arm Ukraine, the poor Russians. Plus, we don't want World War III. That's ridiculous.

Oh, Taiwan, let's go arm the living crap out of them so we can go have World War III with a larger power, China. Why does that make any consistent sense at all? It doesn't. Guys, you're getting played. You're getting played by the same guys, the defense contractors, and you're going to funnel more money to them, and you're going to start more wars and get more people killed. All right, well, since we're doing a foreign policy related block, why don't we move on to the Pentagon leak? after a leak of Pentagon documents, we'll tell you what the documents contained in just a moment.

But I think it's important to learn about the developments in regard to how these leaks came about in the first place. Now, we don't know exactly who leaked the documents. There is already a full-blown Justice Department investigation into this. The leaked documents revealed confidential information about the war in Ukraine, as well as intel that the United States gathered on its own allies. Again, more details on that in just a moment, but to make matters even more embarrassing for the State Department, the Guardian recently reported that this leak had been traced back to a Discord server about video games and YouTubers. So here's what we know.

And this is, in my opinion, a little bit fluid and subject to change. So this is what we know so far, but don't get mad at us as the facts might change a little bit in coming days, right? This is just the initial reporting on the leak. So the Guardian sites open source intelligence analysts as it's source for the report. The report explains that before the leak documents were made known to the general public, they were circulating around several private discord servers, the first of which was called Thug Shaker Central. Okay. So one intelligence analyst who spoke to the Guardian said this, quote, posts and channel listings show that the server's users were interested in video games, music, orthodox

Christianity, and fandom for the popular YouTuber Oxide, who has a military-themed YouTube channel. This server was not especially geopolitical in nature, although its users had a staunchly conservative stance on several issues, members told Bellingcat. Now, racial slurs and racist memes were shared widely. Of course. I mean, it's, yeah. Of course. They already said it was conservative. Okay, so posts and channel listings show that the server's users were interested in video games, music, Orthodox Christianity, you get the point. So the server was not especially geopolitical in nature, just want to reiterate that. Now, according to the report, the documents were leaked when one member, one server member posted them to win an argument

about the war in Ukraine. After that, the leaked documents started circling around a few other private discords, including a Minecraft theme one before leaking to 4chan. So before we pivot to the contents of these leaked documents, any thoughts on the way this was leaked? Yeah, so first of all, I get a little bit of a clarification. So we show videos every once in a while. Those are randos playing video games, that's not who it was leaked to, just to be clear. So now in terms of how they did the leak, well, it seems like it's a right winger who's

did the leak. It's leaking to right wing discord channel. I don't know what Minecraft has to do with it, but that's kind of a fun angle. But if it's going, it has anything new with 4chan, it's, you know, mental right wingers. So now, is the substance correct? I don't know. Right. I mean, I've never seen the right wing be correct about anything, but we don't really know who the sources. We don't know who the sources. The DOJ, along with the State Department, is furious about this, and they're now engaging in a pretty, you know, in an investigation, they want to find out who leaked it. Because that's the one thing that like the State Department will not stand for, right?

If you ever embarrass them on their conduct or things like this, them spying on allies and committing war crimes, they won't, you know, self-reflect and maybe reconsider whether committing war crimes make sense, they'll just get mad at the leaker. Yeah, and so I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying. Look, am I surprised that there might be war crimes that we committed? Not at all, not at all. So like it doesn't, like the assumptions might be completely right. We have no idea like why they chose to put it on a right wing platform, et cetera. But we do know that Minecraft has relocated to Russia to avoid prosecution. Okay, but don't say things like that because I don't want anyone to

think you're being serious. Okay, I got you, but guys, there's a good reason why people are worried about it, because they chased Edward Snow down to the country. Right. They imprisoned and tortured Chelsea Manning. So the American government is brutal when you embarrass them. Julian Assange, another example. Julian Assange, for sure.

If you actually do real journalism that challenges power, and again, I don't, if it's true, I don't care if it comes from the right, the left, I don't care at all, right? But if you do that, you're in a world of trouble. Because if there's one thing that American government despises, it's journalism. So what's in the leaks? That's the question, right? And I don't trust very many sources to do good reporting on these kinds of topics. But I do trust democracy now. Amy Goodman had a pretty good segment on this. Let's watch. Concerning the war in Ukraine, the leak documents suggest Ukraine as little chance of militarily defeating Russia. One document from February predicted that Ukraine's, quote, ability to provide medium range air defense to protect the front lines will be completely.

reduced by May 23rd. The leaked documents also predicted the fighting between Ukraine and Russia and the Dombos region, quote, is likely heading toward a stalemate. Another document indicates members of Ukraine's security services were responsible for sabotaging a Russian plane inside Belarus in late February. The documents also appear to indicate U.S. intelligence agencies had deeply penetrated the Russian military, giving the Biden administration internal information about Russian war plans in Ukraine as well as operational plans for the private mercenary group Wagner in Africa. The Washington Post reports one leak document reveals the Wagner group sought to purchase arms from Turkey, a NATO ally. Documents also show that Egypt, a close U.S. ally,

secretly planned to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia. I mean, that's a lot of tea. In fact, there's additional details that have been reported that you should know about, including the fact that there are NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. So the leak documents also indicate, well, one document dated March 23rd refers to the presence of a small number of Western special forces operating inside Ukraine without specifying their activities or location. The UK has the largest contingent, 50, followed by Latvia, 17, France, 15, and the United States 14. And the Netherlands, they have sent one NATO member to Ukraine.

So look, it sounds believable. So, you know, some in mainstream media hide Ukraine as if like they're about to take over Russia, right? No. So the fact that they're not quote unquote winning, but kind of in a stalemate, least surprising news I've ever heard. They try to sabotage a Russian fighter. Least surprising news I've ever heard. Oh, wow, it's in Belarus.

Look, I get that he could drag more things into it. But if you think that the Ukrainians, the Americans, the Russians aren't. aren't all operating in other countries against one another. You're nuts, you just don't know this stuff at all, right? There's, and so I'm not surprised at, oh, we infiltrated the Russian military. Well, I hope to God we did, right? The Russians are trying to infiltrate us or the Chinese. By the way, including our allies, Israel often tries to infiltrate us.

We do the reverse back to them, right? So every time people pretend that we're like pure as a driven snow and we would never spy on the Russians. Are you kidding? I think they should be fired if they're not spying it on the Russians. Right? So, yeah, that's their job. I get it. The only part that's problematic, again, I get, I'm not surprised by it, but it's problematic

is the NATO forces that are on the ground in Ukraine. They're also spying on Zelensky, too. It's not just Russia that they- Of course we're spying on Zelensky. Of course we are. Come on, guys. Please don't be this naive, right? Like, whatever the merit of this story, I would be shocked if it wasn't happening,

even if the story isn't true, right? So, and by the way, you can tell from the reaction that it might be more likely to be true. No, Kirby is losing his mind. Exactly, that gives you the sense that like, okay, well, something that looked like not that credible on Minecraft, 4chan. These are like the least, Minecraft's fine. The Lord Jain is the least credible thing in the world, right? But the State Department reaction to it makes you think, oh, wow, looks like they got a pretty good source. The State Department has not given us any reason to believe that these leaked documents,

are a hoax, okay, they are furious about this, which seems to confirm that these documents are very much real. What I raise a little bit of concern over is the reporting pertaining to how the leaked documents went into circulation in the first place. I don't know, it's just a gut feeling. I have no evidence to provide for why I feel that way. It's just a gut instinct. But we'll see how that part of the story develops.

But to be quite honest with you, that part of the story is less interesting to me and less important to me than what the actual leak documents contain. And they do contain a lot of damning information. A few other things I wanted to quickly mention, including our relationship with Israel, it's really interesting when you hear our politicians and the executive branch talk about Israel overtly. But behind the scenes, the document titled Israel Pathways to Providing Lethal Aid to Ukraine says Jerusalem will likely consider providing lethal aid under increased U.S. pressure or proceed Degradation in its relationship with Russia, and in addition to that, we were spying on Israel. Okay, so one document reveals that the United States had also been spying on Vladimir Zelensky,

the Ukrainian president. That is unsurprising, said a source close to Zelensky, but Ukrainian officials are deeply frustrated about the leak. Yeah. So, again, the only people who are mainstream media reporters are incredibly naive would be surprised by any of this. Of course we spying on everybody, including our allies, right? And the part that nobody talks about Israel, in regards to Israel, is how we use them as an ally. Like, if you're looking at it from the outside, you think, like, what does Israel ever do for us? Like, we give

them billions of dollars, we give them Iron Dome. Okay, that's all good. That means Israel's protected. But then they turn around and never listen to us about the Palestinians, the settlements, any like encroachment and so you name it they will they never do anything for us right but what you don't know is behind the scenes every once in a while when we need dirty work our CIA our intelligence guys goes to Israel and go hey you want to do the dirty work for us yep and so that's the that's the part that they don't say out loud and by the way probably the number one reason they're most pissed about these leaks because that's the stuff that's super sensitive but again I want to finish the thought on the NATO troops inside Ukraine the reason

And why I point that out as the most dangerous these revelations is, if the Russians drop a bomb and it lands on NATO soldiers, then I don't want our side going, oh, well, that's it. They killed a guy from Netherlands and a guy from the U.S. That's it. We've got to go to World War III. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you're going to put soldiers inside Ukraine, that's on you. That's not on the Russians. We got to take a break when we come back. we will talk about a pretty hot button issue that will just come back.

We'll see in a few. Also Kat and James Wogamuth. James and Kat, you guys are awesome. Thanks for joining. You can do likewise by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube. We go to t-y-t.com slash join. We do this show together. We love you guys.

Casper. All right. Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines says that she was assaulted on the campus of San Francisco State University where she was invited by Turning Point USA and the Leadership Institute to speak about her views, opposing transgender athletes in women's sports. Now she was again a former NCAA swimmer. She competed against a transgender athlete by the name of Leah Thomas. And she felt, Gaines felt, that the inclusion of Leah Thomas was unfair.

Now she tied fifth place, Gaines did, in the 2022 NCAA swimming and diving championships. In March of 2022, Leah Thomas became the first, openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA division one national championship in any sport. After winning the women's 500 yard freestyle with a time of four minutes, 33 seconds. Olympic silver medalist Emma Weyant was the second person to win at, I think about she was one second too late, I guess. I mean, these competitions are incredible. Like these are incredibly fast swimmers, you get the point. But anyway, this has been a controversial issue to say the least.

And so Gaines was invited by Turning Point USA, an organization that we have been very critical of on this show. So we see what's happening here to go on to this campus. Yes, I acknowledge it is a campus located in San Francisco, an incredibly left wing part of the country. And this is provocative. I totally understand that. I mean, and her Twitter profile is also, I think, meant to be somewhat provocative.

that she's a spokeswoman with independent women's forum and that there are only two sexes. Now, Gaines was in fact accosted by trans rights activists after giving her speech. And I want to be clear, there were trans rights activists or people who disagreed with her in the room as she was doing her talk. And they were incredibly respectful. Even though they engaged in protest as well, I think they did it right. But what you're about to see is what I think is incredibly counterproductive for anyone who actually gives a damn about transgender rights in this country. Let's watch. Human rights? Trans rights are human rights! Trans rights!

All right! You're getting! Transc aquarium rights! Black rights! All of kids are human rights. All my dwight is human rights! All of them! Browns are human rights!

Transempts are human rights! Trans, black, people are human rights. Right. I got no. So after that So after that, Gaines had to be

for located for literally three hours. There's documentation proving that, which we'll get to in just a moment. In fact, she couldn't leave the room until members of the San Francisco police department and showed up to escort her out of that barricaded room and to safety. She says that campus police did nothing to help her get out of the room that she was barricaded in, although in the video you can clearly see that they escorted her to that barricaded room as that mob of students were going after her. Now documentation again does prove that she was barricaded for three hours.

So Golden Gate Express tweeted out a thread kind of documenting key moments of this whole incident. So Riley Gaines has been escorted out of the event into a side hallway in the S-HSS building. Students were following through trans women or women or yeah, and then there's a timestamp 8.31 p.m. is when that happened. The next tweet that's relevant at 1121 p.m., SFPD announced that those who stay to protest are now unlawfully congregating and will be arrested if they refuse to disperse. And then finally, at 11.38 p.m. Riley Gaines left the campus. So clearly from 8.30 to 11.30,

three hours. She was, in fact, barricaded in that room as people were outside saying some pretty terrible things. And, you know, it was threatening. If you're someone who's barricaded in a room and you know there's people outside who are screaming at you and they're that animated, it could be intimidating to say the least. I do want to also just go to one more video showing that some members of that group floated the possibility of gains paying a ransom if she wants to be let go. Let's watch. Tell her to pay us. Tell her to pay us if you could go. Ten bucks each. Because she probably got paid for this. So we could get paid for it too. Now it's worth noting that there were trans rights activists in the room as she was giving her talk. And I want to show you what I think a

productive protest looks like, let's watch. You go, they honor you, they named their woman of the year. And so I went to this convention. It was in January, it was in San Antonio. And so I go to the convention, obviously not in support because the award was immediately meaningless. So they're holding up signs the whole time showing their support for the transgender community. There was also a Q&A portion where there was disagreement. They exchanged, you know, their comments, their disagreement with them.

their disagreement with one another. I think that's productive. But what happened outside of that room? What happened for the three hours following her talk? Not productive. I don't understand how anyone would think that this is going to win over hearts and minds in any way. Okay, so I know exactly where it went wrong, in my opinion. And so this is broken down in, in my opinion, to two very distinct protests.

Now it wasn't in real life, it moved fluidly and it was done. Generally speaking, the same people, but let me tell you what I think went right and wrong. First of all, Riley Gaines, she's conservative, so I probably don't agree with a lot of her opinions, but I don't care if I agree or disagree with her opinions. Should she be allowed to speak, of course, right? So the protests in the beginning was perfectly great. So they enter the room along with supporters. They stood in line, got their place, nothing wrong with that.

They asked her good questions, nothing wrong with that. They weren't supposed to make signs. They took flyers from TPA USA and made them into signs. Nothing wrong with that. The people outside are chanting trans rights or human rights. Nothing wrong with that. You go, you protest, you chant, everything's good, right? So this thing was almost a picture of like a pretty good exchange on a college campus in America, okay?

But when she's leaving, you've got to let her go. You can't get in our way. That's no, no, no, no, guys, that's terrible. Okay. So let's talk it through. So number one, she says she was hit. I have no, I don't know. I didn't see it in any of the videos, but could she have been brushed, you know, or hit or so I don't know. It's certainly possible given the mayhem that was happening there. But there's one thing we do know that is clear. The cops thought it was not safe for her physically to leave that room for three hours. That's not good. Okay. And and so guys, chanting is one thing. That's, it's not just like, neutral. It's good. Chanting is good. Protest is good, right? But when somebody feels physically unsafe and you won't let her out, then you've lost the moral high ground. What'd you do that for? Think about it this way, guys. Shoe on the other foot. Imagine it's like right wing protesters and they're chanting crazy stuff about trans people. And the person in there is a left wing speaker

as trans speaker, right? And she's scared for her life in there. And the right wingers are chanting, chanting, and the cops say to the trans activist, it's not safe to go outside. We're worried that they're going to harm you, right? Now, what would our community, the left say? I mean, you know. You know what we would say. We would say those right-winger are monsters. Let her out, let her out, right?

So don't be hypocritical. Please, I'm begging. I know it's so hard. We get into each other's into individual camps. So no, everything on the left has to be right. Nope, everything on the right has to be right. Right, no, that protest got out of hand the minute it felt that it became physically unsafe, right? Do not lose the moral high ground.

You had everything right until then, please. The thing that's frustrating about these situations is that these exchanges, you know, if it's done appropriately without devolving into violence or intimidation, it could be productive. It could be persuasive. That's the way that you actually make progress. mistake that trans rights activists make is just assuming that everyone already knows everything they need to know about transgender people and how they need to have their rights protected. But you gotta understand that for a lot of Americans, these are all new concepts.

And so people, it takes time for them to learn these new things, to be accepting of new things. And I think this knee-jerk reaction of, oh, you're just a transphobe, you're a terrible person, And I'm too, no, I'm exhausted. It is not my job to educate you. Okay, well, understand that if that's your mindset, then you're never going to win. You're just not. And if you think that you're going to win by intimidating and bullying people, that's also not going to work. That actually turns a lot of people off.

Yeah, look, if you're an activist or you're in this spirit in any way, and you say, well, it's not my job to educate you. Well, no, okay, it's not. But then you got to go home. Then you're not in this conversation, right? So like here, I'll use my example. When Muslims were attacked and pre-Trump, too, remember the Republicans had these giant hearings, Keith Ellison went and spoke eloquently. Back then, though, I think the only Muslim American, I forget if Andre Carson was in already. And they were saying that, look, basically we were dangerous and we should be kicked out of the country.

If I said at the time, I'm not even going to cover it on the show. I don't have to explain what Islam is to anyone. Well, how does that help? Well, they don't know about Islam. They didn't grow up Muslim. They don't know that my, that there's, well, instead what I did was I engaged in debate, three hours to Sam Harris. Yeah.

Everyone on Twitter, Bill Maher, everybody else, right? And we got people who, some people at least to realize, oh, Muslims are also human beings. Can I actually jump in on, on an example that's actually very personal to me and to you, right? When I first started working her, working her, when I first started working here, Jank, because of the Turkish bubble like he grew up in, didn't see my perspective on the Armenian genocide. And the reality of it, let's just keep it real, right? I could have just written Jank off and be like, oh, he's a bad person.

He's a bad person. He can't be saved. No, except we engaged in some pretty fierce debates. We engaged in uncomfortable discussion. But to me, it was worth it because I understand that most humans are good and most minds can be changed through persuasion, through understanding, through engaging in these exchanges. Now look, there are people out there who don't engage in good faith debate. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about ordinary people who are open-minded to some extent. And guess what? He changed his mind. And I think the transgender community, along with transgender activists can do. that, I just think some of their tactics turn a lot of people off and they're totally blind

to that, which amazes me. Yeah, and in that case, I don't know that they were all trans activists. They might have been leftists, generally speaking, right? And guys, if you like, don't, again, just don't lose the moral high ground. It doesn't, it doesn't help your cause at all. And you say, I don't have to help my cause. People should already be on my side. You're not, okay, but they're not. So we got to help to make sure we win elections so they don't pass all these terrible bills against trans people. They pass like hundreds and hundreds of bills against trans people, right? So we've got to find a way to convince the average person here.

I'll give you a last example, guys. So for example, when you talk about sports and trans people participating in the sports, I think it's an interesting and legitimate debate to talk about hormone blockers and how much of an effect they have on athletic ability. Agreed, yeah. Right? So when trans folks that are activists like Benny Corolla or anyone else makes that point, That's good. You're engaging and a lot of people don't know that, okay? So that's great. Do that, right? And that might change some minds. By the way, and then it's okay if the right winger or to moderate or whoever or the newbie or even me says, hey, you know what? I'm not sure I'm quite convinced yet. But let's keep talking about it, right? How much do the hormone blockers affect athletic performance? That's a legitimate debate. When the right wingers say, oh, trans people are mentally ill and we should take away their rights. That is not a lot.

legitimate debate. We fight back ferociously on that, but politically and rhetorically, because they're going to win on the politics of it and they're going to keep passing those atrocious laws unless you convince a majority of Americans that you are right. And by the way, guys, we've been through this a hundred times and we've been through it in TYT history. We were right about gay marriage. And what do we do? We fought and we fought and we fought and we fought. And we convinced America that we were right. Now, I know they're retrenching a little bit, But overall, if you do it the right way, you can win and we have one. And we're going to win on this too.

But not if you go over the line, then the right wing will have cause to be extreme in the opposite direction. Final thing I'll say about this is we need to foster an environment that allows curious people to ask questions without fear of being labeled all sorts of atrocious things. Some people are genuinely curious. Some people don't know all the answers and want to ask questions. Simply asking the questions, does it automatically make them bad faith actors who are just trying to trash the transgender community? I think when it comes to youth gender medicine, when it comes to transgender athletes, there are areas that I think are deserving of some debate among good faith actors. And we need to be open to those conversations and open to those debates if we devolve into acts of violence or preventing people from, being able to exercise their right in speaking, I think that it's only going to do more harm than good.

All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we've got more for you, including, oh, this is probably my favorite story of the day. Elon Musk and Matt Taibi have broken up. What happened? I'll tell you more when we come back. What's up, guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna and Jank with you. Lots more to get to, and Jank is going to stop reading comments right now. William Bonar and we Dieter 72 just became members.

We appreciate it at the join button below. Guys, no, no, no, on Twitch, hyphen 8 says trans community are already a for their life, good that someone on the right felt scared. No, not good, not good, we don't sink to their level. Do you guys think that you're gonna win anything by doing that? You're not gonna win. But what's the plan, right? But seriously, this is the debate that Jank and I had, I don't know, a few weeks ago,

where there's a difference between engaging in emotional releases, and I totally get that, right? I have definitely indulged in that quite a bit. But it doesn't actually accomplish anything. really about the person engaging in that emotional release and feeling good by doing so. But in terms of like thinking strategically in how we can successfully fight back against these abhorrent bills and laws that are being passed in red states, what we can do to protect transgender people and actually ensure that there are rights for them, healthcare rights,

making sure that they're protected from these disgusting politicians, that matters. So what is the strategy? what is the plan? Because if the plan is the, oh, we punch Nazis, okay, great, but that's not going to win anyone over. That's not persuading anyone of anything. And in fact, I just don't get it. I don't get it. It helps the right wing. It helps the Nazis. It's all they talk about now. All they talk about is, oh, look at these violent transgender people. They're so violent. Why are you playing into their hands? How can anyone think that's a good idea? I just don't get it. But look, if you can admit to yourself that it feels good, so I'm going to

to do it, okay, then at least you're being honest, and I agree with you. Like, agree with you in that, you're doing it for an emotional release. But if you're doing that with a cover story about how you're fighting for transgender rights, you've got to understand that it's not actually going to accomplish a damn thing. In fact, they're going to use that violence as propaganda against the transgender community, which is exactly what's happening right now. Super lasting. Violence is immoral and wrong in and of itself.

And that is what every progressive activist, all the way through Martin Luther King Jr. or has said forever and ever, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, you name it. But second of all, guys, once the violence starts, the right wing has a massive advantage. They will outviolent us every time. Okay, so don't go down that path. It's an immoral and incorrect path. Okay, that's my two cents on it. Okay, you asked, I said it.

All right, let's go. The bromance between Elon Musk and Matt Taibi is coming to an end. And this all culminated with Musk sharing private conversations with Matt Taibi over Signal. Now, before we get to those messages that they exchanged, what prompted this whole fight, this conflict, this debacle? Well, it all started last week when Elon Musk decided to disable links to substack on Twitter. Now, by disabling them, it didn't mean that a person couldn't post a substack link. But what it did do was prevent people from being able to essentially like and retweet. It really limited or restricted substack links.

Now, the issue was over substack launching a new feature on its platform known as Notes, and that feature happens to be kind of similar to Twitter's features. So the Substack Notes feature was announced by the co-founder of Substack on April 5th. He wrote, today we're announcing substack notes, notes lets writers publish short form posts and recommend almost anything, quotes, links, images, and comments. It's coming soon and will look like this. Okay, and then you can see the imagery of what it'll look like. Now, substack links, according to Mediaite, were limited on Twitter because they could no longer be retweeted or liked. And the embedding of tweets in substack articles was interrupted.

And what does that mean? Well, if you wanted to embed a tweet in one of your articles on substack, you just wouldn't be able to do it and you would get hit with this. This is what it would look like. Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in substack posts. Our team is working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Now, this enraged some pretty notable substack writers, including Matt Taibi, we'll get to in just a moment, Barry Weiss, Michael Schellenberger. those names should be familiar if you've been following the Twitter file story, because they also happen to be the hand-picked, you know, journalists that were chosen by Elon Musk

to report on the Twitter files, right? Now, Matt Taibi was not happy about this, about the limitations for substack links on Twitter. And he says, of all things, I learned earlier today that substack links were being blocked on this platform. When I asked why, I was told it's a dispute over the new substack links. Substack Notes platform. Since sharing links to my articles is a primary reason I come to this platform.

I was alarmed and asked what was going on. I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead. I'm obviously staying at substack and will be moving to substack notes next week. I should also note that in his substack, Matt Taibi made it clear that he plans on leaving Twitter over this. Although who knows if anything develops before he does. I mean, Musk might convince him not to, I don't know. Others like Brett Weinstein were also pretty upset with Elon Musk. He wrote, you know that thing where the left eats its own?

Actually, I do, yes. We mustn't let that happen to the emerging Western values slash free speech coalition. Many of us who have backed your Twitter play and taken substantial heat for it are thrown by this move. The public square isn't a monopoly. The thing is when the public square is owned by one billionaire, the message tends to be monopolized. But I digress, Jenk. Yeah, it's not a public square. I mean, this is the conversation we've had the whole time.

So Elon Musk says, I can't believe the owners of Twitter are against free speech. And he's the one that, to be fair to the critics there, it made it seem as if it was a constitutional issue. and the Twitter was a public square. And just like we told you guys, the minute he bought it, just like Donald Trump, he started excluding people from his platform because it's not a free speech issue. And it's not a public square. He's the owner of that private company. So now the right wing's catching feelings because he's excluding them, just like we told you,

A, he would, B, he has every right to as the owner of it. And see, there is free speech, none of our constitutional rights that includes the Second Amendment, includes the First Amendment, are unlimited. So the classic examples, you can't shout fire in a crowded theater, right? So when you have a platform or you're running a platform, you're not the government, but even so, there are, in fact, more so, there's a bunch of things you go, well, I don't, that's not a productive conversation. Oh, that guy's threatening violence. No, that's wrong. I don't want threats of violence on my platform. That makes sense, right? And then you make your own rules and everyone that owns a platform makes their own rules. If you like those rules, stay with that platform.

If you don't like the rules, then you move off that platform, okay? But this whole thing of like, I can't believe it, Elon Musk was supposed to be our savior. No, he's not your savior. He's a dude trying to make money off of you, okay? And it's not like he's a left winger where we have principles and we care about people and we fight for people who we don't know, etc. He doesn't even claim that, he's just like, yeah. And guys, why did Elon Musk buy Twitter? He did it so he could manipulate markets.

Okay, but hey, I know he's your hero until it turns out he isn't. So let's move on to the Elon Musk blow up on Monday night because things got even worse. Now, in response to that Brett Weinstein tweet, he claimed that Substack links were never blocked, that Matt's statement is false. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone. So their IP address is obviously untrusted. He also says turns out Matt is slash was an employee of substack, which makes it seem as though he's accusing Matt Taibi of being bought and paid for. Which is fascinating because Matt Taibi was accused of being bought and paid for by Elon Musk in being the first journalist chosen to do the Twitter files.

files. Now, Chris Best, who's a CEO of substack, responded to that saying Matt Taibi is not and has never been an employee of substack. He writes a substack and gets paid directly by his readers. Musk, though, later reversed course on his decision in regard to substack links, making substack links functional on Twitter once again. Although if you search for substack on Twitter, you will not get substack, you will get weird response, weird results, including results for newsletter, which makes it pretty clear that this was like coded into the platform to prevent substack links from coming up if you're searching for them. Anyway, but the feud wasn't over yet. So this is where it gets really good. So it starts with Michael Schellenberger posting an article,

an article on reason that Musk didn't like. So he writes, despite all the dismissive assertions from pundits, the Twitter files revealed a high level of coordination between tech companies, government agencies, and political figures. It is thanks to Musk and Taibi that this is now apparent. And in the piece that was not written by Michael Schellenberger, it was written by someone else, it basically argues against what Elon Musk was doing with substack links. This enrages Musk. Musk, for some reason, thinks the article is written by

Schellenberger, even though it wasn't. He probably didn't even bother to really read it. And so he retaliated against Matt Taibi by posting screenshots of their signal exchange. So here, here it is. Total child. Total child, absolutely. And look, honestly, he accuses Taibi of being a substack employee. So it's more of that, like you're bought and paid for. Let's go to the next one. Okay, so this one's really interesting. So Matt Taibi asks him, you're taking down all of my Twitter files threads because you're mad at me personally for not leaving the company where I was already employed, really? And it's like, look, I might disagree with Matt Taibia on a lot of things these days.

But he's not a dumb guy. It's kind of surprising that he's shocked by this. Like, how did you not see who Elon Musk really is? He is a child. He is juvenile. He has incredibly thin skin. I'm not surprised by any of this. Yeah, look, classic douche move is sharing those private messages.

Like, that's usually a pretty good sign of who's right and who's wrong, right? Not always, but often. So why are you sharing his private messages? It, like, that means, hey, we had our understanding that this was supposed to be private, but I'm going to screw you. And I'm a bad guy and I don't actually mean anything I say. Anyways, so look, Matt Taibi's got his own issues. He's been pretty disappointing in a lot of ways.

Lately, yeah. And, and that's we're disappointed because he used to be a great journalist, right? And so he went in this Glenn Greenwald route, but not full Greenwald. He didn't go full Greenwald. He's, as far as I can tell, he's not as much of an apologist for the right wing, although then he does his Twitter files. But I know, Matt, like you're probably, my guess is that they were so out in the wilderness when Elon Musk throws them a line, it was hard to resist going along with this charade.

But come on, you're better than that, man. That stuff was so out of context. It was embarrassing. Anyway, and now what happens? Of course he throws you under the bus. Who'd you think he was? Did you think Elon Musk was the good guy? Okay. Ridiculous.

All right. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts, at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon