The Young Turks - Teflon Don

Episode Date: January 4, 2025

New York Judge indicates that he will not punish Donald Trump for hush money conviction. A New Orleans congressman condemned those “playing political games” in the wake of a deadly terror attack. Rep. Thomas Massie declared he will not vote for Mike Johnson for House Speaker under any circumstances. Comedian Jim Gaffigan defended his anti-Trump remarks, acknowledging that “true die-hard” MAGA supporters may never forgive him." HOST: John Iadarola (@johniadarola), Wosny Lambre (@BigWos), David Shuster (@DavidShuster) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com 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. Live from the Polly Market Studio in L.A. It's the Young Turks. Drop it like the justice system dropping the ball against Donald Trump. Welcome, one and all to the power panel here at the Young Turks with me. John Darola, no jank, importantly, but in his place, we've got David Schuster,

Wazni Lombray, great to have both of you here. Thank you for joining us on the power panel. It's good to be with you, especially honored to be on with Waz. What's up, guys? Have you guys not done a show recently together? Happy Friday to you guys. Yeah, it's been months, honestly. Okay. So happy Friday to you, too. Happy New Year to both of you and to everyone watching at home. Well, I'm excited for today to be the day that you both come back together because we've got an interesting mix of news stories.

We've got a little bit of court stuff. That's what the dropping was a reference to. We've got the fallout from an act of terrorism. We've got some, well, what seemed like it was going to be some really delicious political drums in Congress that sort of went nowhere, unfortunately. And we're even going to talk about comics and politics. So we've got a nice mix of news stories for you. So I hope you're excited. I know I am. Everyone out there, if you're excited, hit the like button, share the stream because we're going to jump into our first story, starting with this. Today, a judge in New York upheld President Trump's criminal conviction in the hush money trial.

that is the good news. It has been upheld. The bad news is literally everything else about it, because there is seemingly going to be no penalties. The convictions upheld, but with it will come no prison time. The only consequence that would have really mattered. Maybe there will be some fines, maybe there'll be some community service or something, but he's not going to be spending any time behind bars, unfortunately. And this is a decision by Judge Juan Mershan, who I heard was very conflicted. Over and over, super conflicted, and yet not going to be sending him to jail. The judge indicated that he favored a so-called unconditional discharge of Trump's sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail and probation. He set a sentencing date of January 10th

and ordered Trump to appear either in person or virtually. I wonder which one he'll choose. So that is, of course, just a week and a half, just 10 days before the actual inauguration, which means that since it will be upheld, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president and as the first president to be a felon at the same time. I sort of had just taken that for granted, but I guess it is possible that the judge could have vacated the actual conviction as well. Now, we don't know what might be left over for the judge to do at that actual sentencing, but what we know won't happen is the roughly four years in prison that Donald Trump was theoretically facing as a result of the hush money trial. And I want to give you just a little bit more details of what the judge wrote in an 18-page decision. Juan Marshan said, while this court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and defendants opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration,

a sentence authorized by the conviction, but when the people concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation. A sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow defendant to pursue his appellate options, which, look, I guess there's some sense to that. But I love that the focus at the end there is that we have to make sure we do right by the defendant who did the crime. We don't have to do right by, I don't know, I guess the people who are harmed by the crime, the people who are concerned about the precedent being set, all of the other potential stakeholders. in this issue. It's mostly just to make sure that he's okay. He gets to be present. It gets to do his appellate thing. Now, look, we've talked obviously quite a bit over the last couple of years about the variety of different allegations against Donald Trump. And everyone can disagree about how they rank the charges against him. I consider the hush money stuff to be relatively

low priority compared to some of the others. But it's just, it's funny that like all up and down, that whatever your list of priorities is, it's just one way or another, lack of accountability, lack of accountability, lack of accountability. I saw, was, a reaction from you. What do you make of what the judge decided? I know that we'd all like to think that nobody is above the law and the law applies equally to everyone. But the practical matter, and I think that's what the judge was trying to get at, is that

you can't put the president, the sitting president of the United States of America, prison for paying prostitutes with his campaign money. Like, it's just not practical to do so. And, you know, when you consider the crime, I honestly think if you polled every single American on this, like, do you think Donald Trump should go to prison for this crime? Most people would say, nah, you know, you know, whatever the slap on the wrist ends up being is whatever. I do agree with you, John, this is kind of the most weak sauce of all of the charges.

Some of them way more serious than this one, particularly in places like Georgia. But, you know, I'm not, I can't pretend that I'm mad at a judge for recognizing that jailing the sitting president of America for this specifically would just be, you know, it would just be seen as very partisan. And I actually think that there is accountability. I mean, thanks to the judge keeping this felony, Donald Trump. Trump will forever be the first convicted felon to be president of the United States. That will always be around him. And if you want to talk about sort of precedent and holding people accountable, based on the falsifying business records felony, the lowest level of felony.

And according to New York's own records, 90% of all people who are convicted on these charges, if they're a first-time offender, they don't get incarceration. The reason that Alan Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump organization and Michael Cohen got prison time is because there were other charges as well, tax fraud and wire fraud. But just on this particular misdemeanor, even though it's 34 counts, in my view, Donald Trump is getting what 90% of the people in his position get. So I don't have a problem with that. And I'm just thrilled that the judge kept the felony because now, to me, history is more important than whether we actually get the real picture of Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. And we're actually going to go in a moment. to the argument that the judge made for why that should be maintained, because obviously Donald Trump would have preferred to get rid of that as well. But I want to say, like, we're talking about how he's making histories and be the first felon and everything. And I remember something that several months ago, I think, Mondale said on the show, And he pointed out that he doesn't like that people are doing a lot of what he sees as like, you know, demonizing someone for having been through, you know, they committed a crime, you know, and all of that, we shouldn't necessarily be demonizing people just for being felons. And as a general matter, I certainly agree with that. I've, you know, I've advocated for people to have their ability to vote, restored after or even still while they're serving. I think the thing for me that makes it something to be pointed out in this case is this isn't a matter of like a person who, who committed a crime, paid their dues to society, made amends, turned their life around, you know, like they committed a crime when they were younger or something. Or maybe we could

have someone that like they committed some sort of felony doing an environmental protest or something. Like it's not one of those situations. Donald Trump has never taken accountability for this or any of the other crimes that he committed. This is a thing that he didn't do 50 years ago. He, a lot of this crime was committed while he was president. It was in the after aftermath of him being elected the first time around. He's never admitted to it. He's never taken responsibility for it. That's the thing that really bothers me. And in addition, never personally taking responsibility other than the label, he's never really been forced to take responsibility for the last couple of graphics. For any of his crimes. Theoretically, some of the

penalties or fines might still go through in the case of the Eaching Carroll. We had an update on that recently. So that's the thing that really bothers me. But I want to lay out the argument for why the label of felon should stick around as provided by the judge, Mershan said, to dismiss the indictment and set aside the jury verdict would not serve the concerns set forth by the Supreme Court in its handful of cases addressing presidential immunity, nor would it serve the rule of law. On the contrary, such decision would undermine the rule of law in immeasurable ways. And so he rejected the Trump legal argument that the case should be dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity, saying he called those claims

a novel theory of presidential immunity that would amount to abuse of his legal discretion, quote, the defendant has presented no valid argument to convince this court otherwise. And it almost seems sort of unfair that you'd expect Donald Trump or his legal team to do that. Like the impression they've been given by their own personal experience throughout all these cases and by what the Supreme Court has said is, look, whatever it is, whether it's a crime you committed before he became president, once you were president that had to do with the official duties of being president that didn't, we're going to come up with something that protects you, something that covers you. And so of course Donald Trump thinks that he doesn't have to make a good case. Everything else just gets set aside. Why shouldn't this too? And so frustrating. But David, I want to give you a chance to jump in on this. Well, he's cornered, right? Because these are actions that happened during the campaign in 2016.

Just a couple of weeks before the November election in 2016, he made these payments. He allegedly falsified the business record so that the money could get to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star. And so, you know, I think it's great that our system is holding somebody accountable in the sense that maybe it's okay to pay off poor stars if you're a candidate, but you better do it in terms of on the up and up in terms of your own finances. It better be money out of your pocket and not money that should go to the taxpayers because it's some sort of business expense. So I do think that, look, Donald Trump, yeah, he's going to get he's going to get off for everything else because of actions while he was president. And he's not being charged with lying about this,

even though everybody believes that he lied when he said he didn't pay her. But he made those statements while he was president. So maybe he's immune for making, you know, false statements while he's president. But in my view, he is being held accountable for actions that are important to our, not only our judicial system, but also our campaign system. Yeah, you know, in a lot of ways when the court put that immunity ruling out there, to me, it just felt like they were codifying something that was actually true, meaning that a president kind of can't commit crimes in his capacity as president. Like, what do I mean by that?

Take Barack Obama, for instance, who, you know, made the unprecedented decision to drone strike an American citizen. And then a few weeks later, drone strike the guy's son. No court, no court date, no arrest, no warrant was read, no anything. It was just basically an extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. And like, in any other context, like, that would be seen as a crime. That would be seen as somebody acting outside the means of the law. But like what the court is saying is like, no, when you're president, you're afforded special protections so that you can go out and freely be president.

I think the problem with Donald Trump is that like he's kind of a unique figure in how nakedly and transparently corrupt the guy is. And so it kind of just flies in the face of this as an idea. I think even somebody like Richard Nixon, who we know committed crimes while in office, like in public, he had this presentation of this, like, really, like, you know, buttoned up guy and, like, law-abiding citizen and, like, you know, hyper law-abiding citizen. Donald Trump doesn't eat, like, dispenses with all of those, like, pretenses. And I think that's the difficulty we're facing here, whereas, like, most presidents seem like, you know, law-abiding citizens on the outside.

and therefore they should be able to freely flout every single international law and even American law while they're in office. Donald Trump seems to be doing it in the reverse. And that's a good point. Yeah, I think, look, as a general rule, I think it would be great to at least try, like, as an experiment, what would it be like if our politicians were at least a little bit concerned about being locked up if they commit crimes? Whether they're a Republican or a Democrat, we've gone a couple hundred years with them never worrying about it. Let's try maybe if they were. At least, look, in the case of these other presidents, they at least tried to link it in

some way to their official duties. Donald Trump's running around stealing documents and sending mobs at the White House and everything. Like there's no case to be made there. And on this particular crime, well, I maintain that I put it below, you know, the fake electors in January 6th and probably the classified documents as well. For me, like, the fact that he's doing the affair or whatever, I don't particularly care about that. Even if you argue that this is in some way money for sex, I personally think that

basically all sex work should be legalized in regulator or whatever. It is still worthwhile pointing out that even if you believe that Donald Trump and Matt Gates, it wasn't when they committed these crimes. But for me, it's if we're going to have a political system where the only people that have a chance of being notable political figures are millionaires and billionaires, and they're just going to buy every election or whatever, at the very least, can we find out what they did, could we know that? If we make it totally legal for them to flout campaign finance laws by just paying off everyone to hide all of the skeletons in their closet, then we don't even get disclosure on their various weird crimes and paths and everything. And I think that we are

owed at least that. It bothers me, I understand it, but it bothers me that the MAGA movement, the people in it don't care that they're the ones he was trying to pull like the wool over ahead of. It's not like, oh, no, if the Democrats find out I had an affair, they won't vote for me. They're never going to. He was paying money to make sure that people who trusted him never found out that he wasn't the guy they had been, that he'd been claimed that he was. And so that should bother them more. Like, I don't know what crime Bernie, like in a similar version would have to cover up. But I like to think that if he paid someone off so that I never found out what he did, that would bother me. But it doesn't seem to bother them, which also bothers

I think the system worked, though, because we are finding out these things. We are finding out about Matt Gates through the congressional report. We are finding out what happened with Donald Trump, in part because of whistleblowers like Michael Cohen in the media. What we're just not getting is we're not getting them going off to prison. And I would argue it's more important that we actually get the information so the public can decide whether Donald Trump is a laughing stock, which I think he is. Does he need to go to prison?

I mean, sure, it might feel great to us. But to me, it's more important for the information to be in front of the American people, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Bernie Sanders, anybody else, we're going to get the information. And in that sense, I think the system is worth. Yeah. And just to end off on John's point there about Trump's fans and why they might not care about this, I think there's just a general sense that all these other guys who came before who were allegedly squeaky clean, you know, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, before he got in office, of course. some people would say, well, those guys didn't get the job done.

It's not as if being squeaky clean is a prerequisite to actually delivering the goods for people. And I can understand, not that I agree with them, I can understand why people might be willing to make an exception for somebody who they think, I think quite mistakenly, but they think is going to make a difference for them while in office. Okay. That's solely possible. I think we should probably take our first break. When we come back, we got updates on some of the attacks of New Year's Eve, as well as the fate and future of Congress after this. Welcome back, one and all to the power panel. We've got more news for you starting with this. You have President

elect Trump and Speaker Johnson talking about open borders in some sort of proximity to what happened in New Orleans and we should not play games with the American people to try and imply that it was something

that it wasn't. No time for political games are trickery to suggest somehow that one party or the other may be responsible. The families of the loved ones who have died and those who are in the hospital fighting for their lives and our law enforcement agents from the federal, local, and state deserve better. That is Congressman Troy Carter, who represents New Orleans, which of course was the site of one of the two terror attacks over the New Year's Eve holiday. 14 people died in that particular instance.

It's about as serious as a bit of news and event in the United States can be. And so I, and I think most of you probably can totally understand why he would be horrified by the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, politicians, including Donald Trump, decided the important thing in that moment was to score as many points as possible politically. And let's not wait to find out what actually happened. Let's just take what we would like to have happened. What we imagine would be awesome to have happened and then just state it as a blanket fact. And when it turns out we're wrong, we're not going to take it back. We're not going to correct it or anything. and that's what's happened. And so there were claims that both of these attacks were committed by

migrants, not true at all. The assailant in the case of Norlands, Shamsaddin Jabbar, reportedly became radicalized and did support ISIS, but was not an immigrant. He was from Texas. But regardless, there was a ton of fearmongering. Take a look at a sampling. But we all know that for the last four years, the Biden administration has been completely derelict in its duty. The congressional Republicans, we hear in the in the House and the Senate have repeatedly asked the DHS under the Biden administration about the correlation, the obvious concern about terrorism and the wide open border. And yet they're coming into this country free. They've been handled the border.

Now, Cheryl, if only 10% got through that we didn't know about, of 55,000, that's 5,500 special terrorists, potential terrorists that are in this country in myorkas and company. As you know, they said, we've got operational control of the border. He's been saying that forever. They're not doing their job, and Americans are paying the price for that. The first day of President Trump's administration, he's going to secure the southern border. And part of the issues that we have, even though this may not have come from the southern border, is that we've got two million people that we don't know who they are, where they are, or why they're here.

We've got over two million godaways, known gotaways, on our southern border. Border patrols the rest of people from 180 countries. Many of the countries sponsor terror. They've arrested or 300 people on the terrorist watch list under Trump. We had 14. So I won't hang his head on these tax being done by U.S. citizens. It's coming. Okay, so again, they all just rush out. And look, I often get cynical and say that in politics, nothing changes. But what you saw in this event shows that some things do change. You know, if this was 10, 12 years ago, the Republicans would have been perfectly happy to just

focus on the fact that the guy was affiliated with ISIS and he was a Muslim. That would have been more than enough for them to fear monger. But now that's old fashioned. It has to be a migrant. They have to just cross the border. And so they leap immediately to that. And by the way, they talk about how it's all Biden's fault because people came across the border. We desperately need Donald Trump to secure the border. Of course, we can relitigate the fact that they blocked the border bill earlier this year, including Mike Johnson, who was in that video. But also, I don't know if anybody's like checked border crossings in last few months. It's just about exactly at the level that it was prior to the pandemic under Donald Trump. So was he responsible

for all the crime of the people that still got through back when he was in charge following four years of his leadership? This is a ridiculous game. And a game is all that it is. The actual people who died, the event that actually happened, that is way in the rearview mirrors of these guys. They've got points to earn. Was, what do you make of this? It feels like they're just stuck in between, you know, wedge issues, right? Like they know that immigration was a big, or is a big issue in the minds of many of our fellow citizens here in America. And they know that terrorism used to move the needle. Like, people used to think that, you know, the Muslims were crossing the southern border and we're going to strangle our babies

in their, you know, in their cribs while we sleep. And it was so scary. And but it doesn't, that doesn't compute anymore. People just don't care about terrorism. as at everyday American citizen concern. And obviously nobody is stupid. They can put this guy's picture up as just a black dude from Texas, born and raised. Like there's videos of this guy all over the internet doing TikToks about his real estate business. What's more American than that? He's clearly an American homegrown guy.

So this idea that he snuck across the border with his, you know, his icky, Muslim cooties is just ridiculous. And it's just obvious that they're grasping at straws and don't have anything. And instead of, you know, just talking about how we could better secure, you know, crowds at large events like the college football playoffs and in places like Bourbon Street in the French quarter in New Orleans, instead of talking about how we can do those things to be better, it's just, you know, playing politics with like an obvious tragedy. And the sad thing is like their rhetoric is not.

not going to, you know, make the families of these victims warmer at night, man. These people are grieving. And, you know, I hope that they're able to find some measure of peace in all of this. I would say that it's, it's not just that people don't care anymore about politics. I think people don't care about exploitation because the exploitation, it used to be that, oh, if Democrats said anything about gun control in the wake of a mass shooting, oh, you're exploiting the tragedy. And yet literally hours after this, there's Donald Trump and other Republicans, not only exploiting this for their game about migrants, but also lying about it and showing that, in my view, the Republican Party is all about racism and bigotry and xenophobia. Because

to Waz's point, I mean, migrants, and all the data shows this, even if you want to talk about migrants crossing the border, all the data shows that migrant communities commit fewer violent crimes per capita than people who are born in the United States. And oh, by the way, Donald Trump says, well, you know, crime is the worst than we've ever. No, violent crime is down to its lowest levels in 50 years. So crime is down. Migrant communities are safer than actually communities here in the United States. So to me, this is purely about because this guy is a black guy with a Muslim name or Muslim religion, they're going to target him or they're going to make this association that he must have been a subversive threat just because he was a Muslim. And we

should have never let Muslims into this country to begin with so we have to somehow shut off the southern border. It doesn't make any sense except in the context of absolute hatred, which is what is on display. Yeah. And meanwhile, we had the other attack, which thankfully didn't claim lives other than the attacker, although it did injure people. And to the extent that they said anything about it, and most of them didn't, it was, thank God it was a cyber truck. That channeled the explosion or whatever. They don't, you're not, you're not interested in that guy? I mean, he was in the military too. You seem interested in this case, but that was a white guy. That's a MAGA guy. You don't care about that?

No, of course you don't. Not interested whatsoever. And again, I just, I love the need to get something out of this. So Lindsey Graham, he's been around for a long time. So coming out of this, he's like, well, why are people saying this is just a crime? This is an international war on Islam. Because he wants to invade Iran after this. Like he's like, hey, well, what are we doing everybody?

The Muslim just killed people. We get to invade a country now. And all the other Republicans, the new Maga are like, well, no, we don't want to do that because like, you know, we pretend to be anti-war, even though we did way more bombing on Syria and we're definitely going to invade Mexico and all that. But we got to get something. Maybe we can persecute them here, though. That'll be fun. Because the future is in private prisons and concentration camps, I guess more so than in defense contractors. The entire thing is just utterly ridiculous. But I will say, I do think that we need to learn lessons. I've been very resistant

to that. And so I, for a very long time, I've had a policy of only blaming politicians for things where it rationally makes sense. But they're teaching me that you don't have to do that. So the first terror attack that happens after January 20th, we're just doing a full show, I think, about how Donald Trump is responsible for this, because we've been taught now. And by the way, I don't even have to say for the reason that makes sense. They're saying it's about migrants, even though it's not. So I'm going to say the first terror attack that happens, that Donald Trump's tariffs blew up Boston or whatever it is that's going to happen, because you could just make it about whatever you want. That's how about American politics works.

And if it turns out I'm wrong, I'm just going to tweet. John was right about everything. And I'll probably become president because that's how America works. Well, and America works now in a post factual world where there's no arbiter, there's no agreement on what the truth is. And what's so scary to me about all us, and I'm saying this a minute ago, is that there will be a size of a portion of Donald Trump's followers who will believe that this guy was maybe not from Texas. That's just the media claiming the fake news media that this really was a migrant, that he really did cross the border.

There will be people who believe that just because Donald Trump says so. And we're in the such perverse world now where you can find whatever you want to support your point of view. And I think Donald Trump knows that. He knows there is no consequence right now for lying because there'll be a sizable number of people who will agree with them no matter what the media says. Yeah. So, you know, there's been a lot of chatter out there, John, about turns to the right, right word turns.

I'm going to make my own right word turns here, right here on the power panel. And I'm going to go full Vivek Ramoswamy on these folks. He wants to change the American culture by switching it out for East Asian and Indian sort of tiger momification of the culture. That's what he would like. Hey, man, I've been to South America, y'all. I've been to Columbia, the food, the people, the community, the dancing, the singing. We need more of that in America. Let those borders wide open, change the entire culture of the country, John.

I want to change American culture for migrant culture. How about that? I'm with you. It'll make America safer, too. Evidently would. By the way, I love that they're doing a version of great replacement, which is we have, an American terrorist and they're replacing it with a fictional migrant terrorist. No, no, no, that's us. We get credit for that. How dare you give that to someone from outside the

U.S. Duh. Make America hate again. Come on, John. Maybe it's time to have an honest discussion, though, about open borders between Texas and Louisiana. Build the wall. Build the wall. Anyway, utterly ridiculous. Okay, I think we should move into one of the big domestic politics stories of the day. So whenever we're ready, let's jump into this. If Chip Roy were asked to serve as chairman of the rules committee, would that be enough to get your vote for Mike Johnson? Oh, no. You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off. my fingers, I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow. And you can take that to the bank.

So you can take that to the bank. That's from last night that is Representative Thomas Massey talking to a PlayStation 2 rendering of Matt Gates. And there he said that under no circumstances is he going to vote for Mike Johnson, which based on the math for getting Mike Johnson reelected his speaker is theoretically bad news. Now cruising in it today, Mike Johnson did have the continued most mostly support of Donald Trump. He said that Mike Johnson's a fine man of great ability who is very close to having 100% support. I think that was him hedging his bets because he wasn't sure of Mike Johnson would get elected again. And a number of Republicans, 16 had not committed to voting for Johnson.

And so it didn't look good. And even most of the way through the vote, it didn't look good because he'd theoretically failed. There were three votes against him. he couldn't afford to lose three votes. And that's when I, and I think many of you discovered that you can, you can change your vote. What? And so two of them did. Representatives Norman and self changed their nose to yeses. And so he went from losing to winning in the middle of it. I don't know how that's allowed. And so regardless, Mike Johnson will be the speaker once again. it had looked like bad news, not only for Johnson, but also for Donald Trump.

If Congress once again sort of snubbed him when he made clear what he wanted, that would have been a bad sign. It still is a little bit muddled since they did vote against him, but he is going to be the speaker. So David, I want to start with you. How important is this for the Republicans for Donald Trump? What do you make of Mike Johnson managing to slip by again? I think Mike Johnson is going to regret having actually won the speakership because just take a look of what's going to happen in the next three or four weeks. I mean, Republicans have won the battle, but they're going to lose the war. Just look at Congressman. In order for him to switch his vote, he needed Mike Johnson to pledge to do something about government spending. Well, the first

item that's going to be on the Republican agenda is this $85 billion request, which is, by the way, more than the entire Department of Justice, which includes the FBI and the Department of Prisons, $85 billion just to start the deportations. Where are they going to find that money? There are members of Congress who are going to say, no, no, that's going to explode the deficit. You can't just spend money on the government credit card. You've got to find some cuts. There is a mess that is headed for the Republican Party with all of this. So I think, look, Mike Johnson, yeah, I mean, Donald Trump didn't throw him on the bus, in part because Mike Johnson supported Donald Trump's assessment that there was an immigrant that must have

been responsible for the mayhem and the violence in New Orleans. And Donald Trump thought, okay, this guy showing fealty to me, I'll go ahead and whip some votes and convince some people to let him be speaker, but Mike Johnson's going to rue the day that he actually won the speakership because he's only got trouble that's coming ahead. Yeah, I think he was the little Freedom Caucus, you know, rabble rousers was stuck between a rock and a hard place because in order for them to actually go through with their little protest, they would have to engineer their own little January 6 against Donald Trump's certification for president. You need a speaker in order to certify this guy's election.

And there was no chance in hell that these guys were actually going to stand in the way of that. No way, no how, because obviously the Democrats had already decided Hakeem Jeffries went public and said, we're not helping these guys get a speaker through. Like, they're going to have to figure it out on their own. And, you know, another thing that the Freedom Caucus guys are going to have to come the terms with is like, yes, your party always runs on fiscal conservatism, tightening the belt. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whenever you guys are in power, you run up the spending every single time.

People don't call tax cuts to spend, but that's what it is. You're losing tax revenue when you cut taxes for the ultra wealthy. All they ever do is big, big, big government spending. And Donald Trump's first administration was no different. And this one is going to be the same. So these Freedom Caucus guys are going to do a lot of crying and whining. and ultimately they're going to fall in line because Donald Trump is their father. 100%.

Tucker Carlson made that clear in the waning days of the campaign. You're totally right, and they're totally going to do that. Like, if any conservative wants to bet me on whether Donald Trump will increase the deficit in the national debt, I will bet literally every cent I have. It's not much, but I'll bet it. He did it last time. He'll do it again. They're going to hand trillions of dollars to corporations and the Uber wealthy.

Now, they do have a plan for how they're going to offset some of that. tariffs, which means a tax on you. If you're regular conservative, you're going to be paying more for virtually everything you buy. But that's okay. Like when you're struggling to make ends meet, I'm sure you will be consoled by the fact that Microsoft is better off or something, I guess. That's what populism is, I think. Anyway, they're also going to be cutting nutritional assistance to the poor. There was something about making sure that Medicare patients can't get access to ozempic or other medicines like that. So I guess that's balance, I suppose. In any event, our producer gave me access to an updated story about how they got those Congress people to

switch their vote, mid vote, to a yes for Johnson. So apparently Nancy Mace was near Norman, one of the two, and called up Trump, who was playing golf. He's not busy. He's got nothing coming up in the next few weeks. So he can go off and play golf all day or whatever. Is that how you would act if you were about to be president? Dear God, anyway, she called him up and Trump is like, look, I'm in the middle of a golf game. He's not even fully engaged with the phone call, let alone what's going on in the country and pressures him. And Trump seems to lean into the idea that Norman had supported Nikki Haley. So there's a little bit of like implicit threat. But anyway, Trump talked to both of them in the middle of the voting. I guess he was willing to put

that much of his day into the future of Congress, and he did get them switched over to supporting Mike Johnson. It's just such a weird thing politically. And we'll end on this. I want your thoughts, guys, that like Mike Johnson has so much built up animosity from some of the more hard right people in Congress, people who many of them would say that they're the biggest supporters of a Donald Trump. And yet Donald Trump is choosing to go with Johnson rather than switching over, I don't know, to like a Jim Jordan or something, that's who Norman supported, someone like that who would seem to be more of a natural ally. I don't know, is it just because they know that he can get the job done? He's been speaker. I'm curious, David, what you make of why he's putting his

capital behind Johnson. Well, my sense is because Donald Trump knows that Johnson is expendable. I mean, there's a limited number. There's a finite number of people that can be Republican Speaker of this House. So why bother sacrificing Johnson now? Why not at least try to eke out some policy concessions or try to get him to sort of whip and get some of these Freedom Caucus people in line on actual policy as opposed to simply identity. So in my sense, I mean, I think Mike Johnson's not going to last the speaker, maybe a couple of months. And then there'll be a Jim Jordan when there's a fight over it's the budget deficit or deportations or spending or whatever it is. And Donald Trump is simply saying, okay, well, let's make the speaker the fall guy, not now, but let's do it when we

actually have some skin in the game in terms of some actual legislation. Yeah, I definitely agree with David there. And also, I think a big part of it is that Johnson's opposition as it stands, they don't have a candidate themselves. There's nobody else to replace him with. They don't have a replacement. So if you're Donald Trump, you don't really have to make a move in terms of shoring up Speaker Johnson's position because there's no alternative, not right now anyway, not as things stand in terms of whipping up the requisite votes that could push somebody into that leadership position. And so it makes sense to hang back. And also, like, I just don't think Donald Trump gives a damn about the machinations

that go on in the house. Like, I don't think he cares about the legislative process. I think he'll get his agenda item. And when it's time to ram it through, he'll figure out the levers to pull the pressure points to sort of poke on. But like, in the meantime, he's not like, sweating the like, you know, the minutia of what's going on in Washington. Yeah. And I mean, how many times could he possibly really need to work with Congress of the next four years? Like he's going to get his massive tax cuts. And then there's the budget process, I guess, for, you know, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars deporting people. But other than that, like we know what happened the first four years. It's not like he had a

huge agenda of lots of complicated legislation. Anyway, we'll see. Well, and he's going to need somebody to blame, right? When his ambitious agenda, when most of it doesn't go through, he's going to need to say, okay, it's Speaker Johnson's fault. He's out of there. So don't play the card now. Hold on to that until Donald Trump needs an excuse. Yeah. Man, I know that it's been said for a lot of years. I think it's been true for a lot of years, but how much must every, not everyone, but most of the people, the Republicans in Congress, just be waiting for Donald Trump to finally move on. I thought you was going to say die. No, no, I wouldn't say that explicitly. I would say move on. Anyway, in any event, we should take our second break, I think. We've got a little bit of a lighter topic perhaps after this.

Okay, everybody, welcome back to what remains of the first hour of the Young Turks power panel. I want to remind you all that we've got coming up in the next hour. You're going to be very lucky to be joined by Sharon Reed, Mark Thompson. We've got Yaz as well leading the panel. So a lot of fun to be had there. You're definitely going to stick around after this. But first, we've still got a little bit more time for news in this hour. So why don't we jump right into this? I don't regret. I regret that people think that I was criticizing people that support Trump. That was never the intention.

I don't regret it, but I also do acknowledge that there are true diehard Trump fans that, you know, probably enjoyed my comedy that because they feel so passionately will never forgive me, you're going to lose people. Comedian Jim Gaffigan, they're talking about the sort of mixed feelings he has about the fact that he's been pretty clearer in the past about what he thinks about Donald Trump. Now, his comedy very rarely has anything to do with politics, which made his comments on social media sort of stand out. He's a guy that often talks about his family or about horses or food or whatever. And full disclosure is one of my favorite comedians. And he has appeared

on our network before. But it is interesting that he's received backlash, even for the limited comments he's made. So here's one from back in 2020, which was obviously a difficult time. We were all spending perhaps too much time on social media. So at that point, he had tweeted, look Trumpers, I get it. As a kid, I was a Cubs fan. And I know you stick by your team no matter what, but he's a traitor and a con man who doesn't care about you. Deep down, you know it. I'm sure you enjoy pissing people off, but you know Trump is a liar and a criminal.

I think that everything he said is just objectively true. But that said, that's going to bother people who might on some level know that it's true but not mind or would prefer not to think about it. it. And so he did receive some pushback for that. So more recently, he was on the last laugh podcast with the Daily Beast Matt Wilstein, and he was asked about whether he has these regrets and everything. And he does seem focused on, he doesn't want the Trump fans to think that he was personally attacking them. But anyway, listen to a little bit from that. I regret that people think that I was criticizing people that support Trump. That was never the intention.

It was, I, you know, I regret kind of, I mean, I definitely, someone said like, now I can't follow you anymore. And I kind of said, F you to them. But some of it, it's weird because I think authenticity is really an important thing, not only as a comedian, but also with your children, right? And so I was sitting at home with these kids. And I do feel as though, it's weird because you sit on both sides.

You see people that come out against, you know, Trump and people that come out against Kamlo or Biden or whatever, or the Democrats. And it really, from my perspective, I'm like, that doesn't seem worth it. But there is something about an authenticity. And again, it's not core to his comedy, but he apparently felt like he needed to get involved. That, by the way, was obviously in the lead up to the previous election. But anyway, he has received some strike back. He seems unsure about whether it's had lingering impacts. But, as I'll start with you, what do you make about that?

And more generally about people who are not normally political, maybe some athletes or musicians or actors, sort of making clear what they think. Yeah, I think it's important if what you do is sell your wares to the public that you make it clear that you're not. not insulting roughly half of the public, right? People who voted for this guy. That's generally a good idea to not alienate an audience just off the bat by dissing them. However, what I would say to MAGA people, and I get it, if you're a right winger and, you know, you've consumed culture for the last 30, 40 years, it's basically been, you know, elite culture is liberal culture. Like, if you're watching TV or movies, it's generally liberal.

culture. And I can understand how you can get tired of it or whatever. I just, what I would say to them is like, I don't think most celebrities have great politics. Like, and you should just get over it. Like, you know, I don't agree with Vince Vaughn or Adam Sandler's right wing natures, but I enjoyed uncut gems. I watched Bad Monkey on Apple TV Plus and it was completely fine. Like, get over it. That's what I would say to these people. Get over it. I love that. Yeah, I mean, enjoy the comedians and their timing and their skills. And what is it? People say you shouldn't take Donald Trump literally. You should take them seriously. Well, you should take the comedians and their skills seriously, but don't take their views literally or something like that. I mean, they're comedians.

And likewise, I do think it's difficult, though. I mean, the one area was where I'd sort of disagree a little bit is I think that it's, I think it is difficult to sort of find that line between critical. criticizing Donald Trump and what you're saying about his followers, that by saying Donald Trump is a con man, while the people who follow him then are getting conned, what does that say about them? And then we get into the whole debate about our most Americans stupid, our most Americans illiterate, our most Americans simply misinformed, or have they been disinformed by Fox News, and they've got a lot of garbage in their brains over the last three years that you can't erase in a three-month presidential election. It's difficult to have that argument. And so I just

think we should all be transparent about what do we believe about Donald Trump and what do we believe about his followers? I do believe that people who tend to be lower information people who are not as intellectual, they fall for Donald Trump's crap more than people who are higher intellectuals who are higher thinking. That doesn't mean that all Trump people are stupid or all smart people support Democrats, but I think there's a ratio there. Yeah. And by the way, you can acknowledge that and feel empathy for the fact that these people are being targeted, not just by Donald Trump or whatever, but by an entire media sphere of, you know, podcasters and shows and people trying to get them to buy anti-woke beer and everything. Like, I know a lot of, a lot of Trump fans will

feel maybe rightfully so disrespected by the way some Democrats or liberals talk about them. And you're totally free and it's fair to do that. But like, when someone tries to sell you, anti-woke banking services or whatever, like, they're disrespecting you way worse, to be clear. Jimmy Gaffigan's at least being clear about what he believes. And what I would say is I consider myself and pretty much everybody on this panel to be pretty smart person, people, excuse me. And we believed in the rhetoric, the populist or rhetoric of Barack Obama, that he was for the people, by the people of the people.

That man's administration was all about the moneyed interests of this country. We got Duke, too. We're smart as hell and we can get duped just like the mag of people. I mean, I would argue that Barack's game was a lot sharper and better and more believable. But hey, whatever, that might be a coping mechanism. Perhaps, perhaps. Well, we've got a few more minutes. I think we can go to this last clip because Gaffigan was at the, he performed at the Al Smith dinner just last year, actually.

And then he did another podcast on The Daily Beast with Samantha B and Joanna Cole. and he had a little bit more to say about maybe his fears going forward about Donald Trump and his willingness to direct his followers at people he doesn't like. There was like this calculation that if he's like, I don't like this guy, he could bring it up and tell people. And his loyalist would be like, whatever you want, we'll take him out. You know what I mean? It's like there are people in the entertainment industry that have like a security detail. Yes. And you're like, do you really need that?

And they're like, yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah. Really? And they're like, yeah. And so like, that's just weird. I mean, and I think that Trump does have a certain amount of sense of humor, but he could sick people on someone. Yeah, I don't know about that sense of humor thing. I might disagree with him there.

But yeah, I would be concerned about that. Donald Trump is not, you know, above commenting on comedians or actors he doesn't like. Like, how many times has he sent out messages about Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or Alec Baldwin? He does it constantly. The dude does not like being criticized, which I get. Most people don't, but he also has no ability whatsoever to do anything other than seek out the criticism and expose himself to the people mocking him. He can't just ignore it. And I will remind everyone, you know, remember Caesar Sayak, like, you know,

He put together a list of politicians and other people, people in the news that he wanted to pipe bomb. And oh, what do you know? It was the specific like, you know, 18 of the people that came up most often in Donald Trump's rally speeches. Like a really unlikely combination of people. Now, that was a number of years ago. Maybe it won't happen again. It definitely seems like recently Trump affiliated people that want to commit acts of violence weirdly target Trump or his buildings for some reason, which I don't understand. rather than his critics.

But I understand people being concerned. There's a lot more political violence seemingly than there used to be. And you never know if you could be on that list. So any final thoughts, David, about any of that? Well, and my fear is that the violence is only going to get worse because I think the greatest thing that's coming, I shouldn't say the greatest, but the worst thing that's coming from the Trump administration is I think our economy is going to crash. He's going to explode the deficit, inflation is going to go crazy.

If he gets the tariffs and we're all going to be paying a lot money, I think the economy is going to tank. And if you look at what caused some of the, you know, mental breakdowns of so many people who engage in mass shootings and mass violence, even the guy out here in Las Vegas, I mean, he had sort of a mental crack up because of PTSD, but he also had some financial concerns reportedly. Well, when there's greater financial concerns across the country and you have people more and more people who are going bankrupt or people who lose all their savings in the market, whatever it is, if the economy goes south, then we become even more unhinged. And that's where I fear that in this environment where it's okay somehow to sort of personalize your hatred towards

people, well, then you actually have targets. And all it takes is, oh, my God, the economy goes south and suddenly people are going hungry and they've lost all faith in institutions. It must be the immigrants fault. It must be John's fault or Wallace's fault or Schuster's fault. Probably was. And then we're all like in danger. I mean, so it's a scary time. I hear it. All I'm hearing is if I see Scott Bayo out in LA, I got to put them in a headlock, all right? That's all I'm here. And if I see a mega celebrity out in these streets, John, we got to put hands on these folks. That's all. That's all it is. Watch out. Some of them might be litigious. They could use the funds. We're not making any threats, anybody, okay? Dean Kane, get off the phone with your lawyer. Yeah, we're all just kidding, guys. Yeah, Kid Rock. Don't go shooting up any beers. Miller alone when you see him 100%. Well, that is unfortunately all the time we have for the first hour of the power panel. Was as always, thank you so much, David as well. Pleasure to have both of you on. You can check them out at the ringer and at Rebel HQ. Hopefully we'll be

able to break down the news together again. But we are going to take a short break. When we come back, Yaz is going to be taken over. Sharon Reed, Mark Thompson. We'll be joining her. You're not going to want to miss it. We'll see you soon. Thank you.