The Young Turks - The Young Turks 01.03.18: Trump vs Bannon, Trump Button Tweet, Trump Golfing, and Fake News

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from January 3rd, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1: Cenk & John. Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian. Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” Trump tweets response to Steve Bannon. *Cenk predicts Jared Kushner flipping on Trump* Hour 2: On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s time on the links when asked by Yahoo News reporter Hunter Walker what his biggest accomplishment there has been. “I think it would certainly be developing deeper and better relationships with members of Congress in which those relationships have helped push forward the president’s agenda ― specifically when it comes to helping get the tax reform and tax cuts passed,” Sanders said, adding, “He has played golf with a number of senators and used that time certainly to accomplish that.” Researchers from Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and the University of Exeter found that around one in four Americans visited a fake news website in the weeks before and after the 2016 election. The study notes that this consumption of fake news was “heavily concentrated among a small group”—almost six in ten visits to fake news websites came from just 10% of Americans, and that those visitors were deeply pro-Trump. 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. Thank you for watching or listening to this free podcast of the Young Turks. We want to make sure that you get some portion of the show every day. But if you want the full show, which is actually five segments, come become a member and support independent media as well. TYT network.com slash join.

Meanwhile, enjoy the free podcast. All right, one of the Young Turks on a giant newsday. Too big. Okay, we have full scale civil war within the Republicans. You know, there's a lot of, I hate the word breathless, but I'm going to use it for one second here. There's a lot of breathless coverage on MSNBC about how there's conflict within the Republican Party at the drop of a hat. Like, they'll have a slight disagreement over one stupid provision of the tax bill, and they're like, oh, my God, the Republicans are fighting. Like, whatever, okay, that's, those are not real fights.

They're moving the Overton window. It doesn't matter at all. They're going to pass the tax cuts, et cetera. This is actual civil war. Yeah. I had to try to go on, I went on Twitter to try to find out who's on Bannon's side, who's on Trump's side. Like, I don't know.

Who is sitting back and waiting to see cowardly, in a cowardly fashion, how the dust settles. Right. So I, I, I, look, there's eight different ways that this breaks out. There's the establishment guys who are on neither one of their sides. Then there's the deplorables who are used to be on both of their sides, but are now unsure as to who to hate and who to troll. Oh, it's an amazing day. So I understand that some right wingers watch our election night coverage for porn.

Okay, literally, I heard comment online about that. Well, I guess this will be the equivalent for the left wing. Because there's blood in the streets between Bannon and Trump, and it is wonderful. Really fast before we jump into it. I posted something about how, assuming we live through the nuclear war, Trump is about to start. I wonder what the response from his defenders will be the next day. And someone said, yeah, I bet you'll be crying on the show. And my reaction was, there's nuclear war, yeah, I probably will be.

That's terrible for everybody. What are you talking about? Will you be celebrating? Probably you will. Millions of people died. We're innocent civilians, yay! But we triggered a lib. So it's all good.

Anyway. So, yes, we will get to the North Korea story. And the North Korea story has two angles. One is the insanity, the unbelievable, unreal insanity of Donald Trump's tweet about North Korea and his big button. Also, insiders of the White House saying, no, no, you guys don't get it. We're on the brink of nuclear war. You're not getting it.

But that's the second story of today. Yeah. And then at the end, I would say what is my favorite story of the day is we're going to take you back through a tour of last year and all of the environmental protections that were stripped away by the government last year. Incredibly important. If every other story today weren't an 11 on the scale of insane, okay, of 1 to 10, the EPA story, the regulations that they took away are unbelievable, unbelievable. Okay, all right, so for God's sake, Jake, you or John Iroll, let's get started. Okay. Today is a crazy day in the news. This is how crazy it is. Two ways. One, America's talking about a book, which that's a big change.

And two, Trump found a white supremacist he doesn't like anymore, actually. First time it's ever happened. And it all has to do with a Michael Wolf book that's coming out in just a few days that has a number of interesting and provocative, even shocking revelations from inside of the White House. from, I think he conducted something like 200 interviews. And primarily we're going to focus on comments coming out of Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. There's a number of different elements of this, but some of the most interesting have to do with Bannon's views of the controversial Trump Tower meeting that Don Jr. and Kushner and others took part in. Here's what Steve Bannon had to say about that. The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference. in the conference room on the 25th floor with no lawyers.

Even if you thought that this was not treasonous or unpatriotic or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately. Look, pause here. There is a thousand amazing angles to this story. But him calling the Donald Trump Jr. and other people involved in the campaign stupid, that would be gigantic news in any other administration. If the Obama administration had incredibly important factions,

Biden is calling Clinton stupid, that would be like, whoa, what is this? Unheard of on president. But that is minor news compared to Bannon, the former chief strategist for Donald Trump. Who headed up his campaign. Yes, who was the CEO of his campaign, whatever that means, saying that is the Trump's son and other top members of the campaign were treasonous. They've betrayed this country. That's not a liberal saying it.

That's Steve Bannon, the leader of the alt-right saying it. His former chief strategist, that is, these news is unprecedented. I've literally never seen anything like this in my lifetime. But I would argue that what we just read is less interesting than this next one, because there it's a view on what happened. He thinks it's treasonous. Okay, that's fine. That doesn't necessarily change the legal situation.

But he then said this. He was quoted by Wolf as saying there was zero chance Trump Jr. didn't walk the Russian meeting attendees up to his father's office on the 26th floor. Now, he's not saying he knows that it happened. And I think that you would be crazy to simply believe anything that Steve Bannon says without checking into it. But if that is actually the case, if there is evidence that that happened, that means that everything that the Trump family has said in the wake of the initial news about that meeting was entirely untrue. puts them in a totally new area of legal jeopardy. It's already, the Trump Tower meeting is already absolutely terrible for them, everything about it. But if Trump has been lying this entire time about, oh, it was just, they didn't have anything,

we were kind of pissed about it, we rushed them out the door. If they brought them up to Trump himself to meet about that, I don't know what happens from this point on after that. Okay, so let's break down a couple of really important parts of that. Steve Bannon now says, look, I don't have any new little argument, so that's their business, not my business. He said, I'm not going to get a lawyer. I'm not going to go on national TV, presumably during investigations. Okay, one, he's, with that quote alone, he's probably wrong because any investigator in the right mind would say, why do you think they went up to the 26th floor

to meet Donald Trump? What do you know that we don't know? We'd certainly like to know if Donald Trump actually did meet personally with the Russian representatives. And now that leads the point number two, which is, this is not being talked about enough. And that means, Meaning, the lawyer that they talked to, the Trump campaign talked to, including, by the way, Jared Kushner, wanted to talk about the Magnitsky Act, and that it was clamping down on Russian oligarchs. Yeah. Okay. And so the thing that the Putin and his oligarchs cared most about was that law. So that was not a minor meeting.

That was the major meeting. What is the trade? You get rid of that act, which is blocking our bank accounts, and we help you win the election. So anyone involved in that meeting, that's already toxic. It's nuclear. And if Trump's involved, that's even worse, obviously. And it was about the Previzan case. The Previzan case is also about the Russian oligarchs.

They had them. You know who had him? Preet Barara, the U.S. attorney in New York. You know what happened? Remember when Trump fired him? And then they settled it for a comically low number. $6 million? Right afterwards.

So it's the corruption, it's the collusion, the collusion is minor. As Bannon himself says here, as John will review the quotes, it's the money laundering. What did I tell you from day one I told you it was the money laundering? Trump, the Russians have put in hundreds of millions of dollars into real estate in New York and Florida to launder money. That's what the issue is. Finally, in regards to the importance of those quotes that we began with, why is Bannon saying it in the first place? Because, okay, sure, they had a rift at the White House, but publicly he's been generally supporting Trump. Breitbart, which he runs, has been saying the investigation is wrongheaded and it should be ended, et cetera.

So why is Bannon saying this stuff to a reporter? It's because Bannon knows what we don't know, which is that Trump definitely did it. He was, Bannon was there. I'm sure that he tried to stay away, and hence why he's throwing everybody else out of the bus and didn't want anything to do with the Russians. But having been there, having been in those rooms, right or wrong, I don't know what evidence he has, but it's obvious from his quotes that Bannon thinks they did it, I don't want any part of it, I'm throwing them under the bus, so you know that I didn't do it. Yeah, important to bear in mind that while it looks like Wolf had multiple interviews and meetings with Bannon, many of them were before. his rift, before he left the White House. That's very important.

Because why is he telling Wolf all this stuff trying to distance himself from Trump when at the time he still Trump's chief strategist? Because he knows they did it. It is the money laundering. Okay, let's run through a couple more quotes on that same

vein, actually. Steve Bannon quoted in the book, which is forthcoming, saying this is all about money laundering. Mueller chose senior prosecutor, Andrew Weissman first, and he has a money laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner. It's as plain as a hair on your face. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say, play me or trade me. And then I hope that

the president's son saw this today. They're going to crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV, adding that the White House should reconsider its apparent lack of concern over the Mueller investigation saying they're sitting on a beach trying to stop a category five. See, that's part of the reason why he's not on the beach anymore. And he just said, hey, look at those idiots on the beach. He already knows a category five is coming. That's why he got the hell out of dodge. So on whether it was money laundering or not, we have admissions.

This is why people say, like, Jake, how are you so sure that he did a deal with the Russians? Well, his two sons have already admitted that the Russians have funneled all this money to him. Eric Trump said to a golfing reporter, we have all the funding we need out of Russia. That's a direct quote. We have all the funding we need out of Russia, okay? And Dotson, the reporter then asked, really? And Eric said, oh yeah, we've got some. some guys that really, really love golf and they're really invested in our programs, we just

go there all the time. Yeah, Russian oligarchs, they really, really love golf. That's why they funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump. That's not why. Rich people do like golf, in my experience. And so that's Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., said back in 2008, quote, Russia's makeup are pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. How obvious does it have to be? So that's why Bannon says this train goes through Donald Trump Jr. And they're going to crack him like an egg.

Because the kid's an idiot. They're both idiots. They're so stupid. They're dad who's monstrously stupid thinks they're dumb. Okay, that's how dumb the kids are. And then he wasn't done yet. Bannon also apparently called Ivanka dumb as a brick. So she's supposed to be the smart one.

So I think she is, guy. Look, it's about the money. It's always been about the money. The collusion during the election is a side effect of the money laundering that Trump's been doing for the Russians. That's why I thought he'd never run because I was wrong. I thought that he would have to show his taxes. Turns out, no, he didn't have to show his taxes, he never showed him.

But Mueller's in his taxes now, and he's also in the Deutsche Bank account. And Bannon also talked about Deutsche Bank. He said, Mueller's in Deutsche Bank, it's over. It's, you're not getting it. Like, you don't get it because the media, for all the talking that they do about Trump and all the talking about collusion, the minor little stuff that they made, I think they actually make into too big a deal. in terms of the actual election stuff, the emails, was a stolen, was it a, you know, was it

WikiLeaks? Did they get it from Russia? No, you're missing the big picture. The reality is that the election is the last part of the deal, okay? So look, you can say that I'm wrong about it, and I've been saying this for a year, and I've been saying it based on evidence you already see in the public, but why would Bannon say it? Why would Bannon, while he's still with Trump, say this stuff? Because he knows they did it. He knows it, and he just said it. It's, look, man, in a thousand different ways, it's game set and match. I mean, it's not like it's over today. Mueller hasn't actually revealed anything yet. There's been the actual indictments of Trump, the resignations, et cetera, et cetera. But this train, it's, it's, it's.

It's a runaway train, and they think that they're going to call it fake news and stop it. They're not going to stop it. You know why? Because Trump is not smart enough to cover it up. As Bannon said on another instance, not related to this book, Trump has the mentality of an 11-year-old. You think he can cover up hundreds of millions of dollars in money laundering with the Russians? You think he's sophisticated enough to do that? Hell no.

They're in the Deutsche Bank account. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, and hey, conservatives, pick a side, can't wait. Whose side are you on? Bannon or Trump? This is awesome. I'm going to predict Mosca with Trump. But we'll see. Now, this is a catfight, though, so we do need to get the other side. We have to be fair to Trump, which I insist that I would never do.

So we're going to continue to mock him. But Donald Trump was, of course, not happy about the revelations coming out of Michael Wolfe's upcoming book, especially the quotes about Steve Bannon and how he viewed the Donald Trump Jr. Trump Tower meeting. And so Trump put out a statement. We're going to show you excerpts of that. We also have Sarah Huckabee Sanders covering for the president as well. First, the statement. He said, Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. And if Trump is an expert on anything, it is having lost your mind. We're going to show you more.

But imagine, though, if, I don't even know, what would a similar situation be? If Rahm Emanuel said something mean about President Obama, imagine President Obama saying he lost his mind. We live in strange times. But he said that. Then he goes on to say, now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which directly goes against past things that Trump has said. but, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country, forgotten even by Trump now, yet Steve had everything to, I love that this is thrown in, it has nothing to do with what

they're talking about, yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans. So both Steve Bannon and Trump supported Roy Moore, even though it was a terrible call. The night of the election loss of Roy Moore, Trump says this had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Steve Bannon, who, like Trump, like Trump, campaign for Roy Moore. It has nothing to do with anything. I just, I love that moment. Man,

political blood all over the streets. I mean, look, first of all, if you're a sane human being who's president, you wouldn't use any of these words to begin with. Fine, okay, but it's Trump. We're past that. Okay, second of all, pause for a second. This is all in the press, the stuff

that you call fake news, which is of course not fake. That's why you're flipping out. Call Bannon. Hey, hey, Steve, did you really talk to Michael Wolf. Can we pretend that you didn't? Can you go out there and claim that it's fake news? Can we do damage control? But he, but he's

a child. He has no self-control and he has no intelligence whatsoever. So he doesn't think rationally. He goes, blah! Okay, he's a loser. I'm a winner. Okay, he lost this. He did not only his job, but his mind.

I got him. Oh, no, no. What you just made there was you made this civil war intractable and irreversible. So now, Bannon must strike back at you. So now you've lost Breitbart. You've lost some wing of your base, certainly, right? What do you have left? This is Tony killing Christopher.

You've got nothing left. The last scene is in a diner. Okay, and the last face you see is Mueller. You're done. Why did you react and lash out this way? such a stupid thing to do. Thank you. Well, the interesting thing is that so far as I know, Bannon, the only statement out of Bannon by a spokesperson is that he's going to step back and just let this thing proceed for a little bit. We'll see how long that goes. So all you have

are quotes from an as yet unreleased book. It would be so easy to say Michael Wolf is lying about Bannon, but he doesn't do that because he knows he's not lying. Now, Bannon might be lying, but apparently Bannon did tell Michael Wolf those things. And Bannon is not lying. I'm just saying, if we're going to trust someone, see if Bannon is not my number one person to trust. The only person I trust less is Donald Trump. Yes, exactly. Okay. So, and Bannon has a logical reason to state these things, which is they're all going to jail and I'm not going there.

Okay. And Trump has all the reason in the world to lie, no, no reason to tell the truth. But it doesn't matter. You're right. They could have concocted a thousand different stories to try to weasel their way out of it, maintain the base. They could have done all those things. But he's a temperamental child. Today in the news, we've got the North Korea story where White House insiders are saying

you guys aren't getting it. He's on a hair trigger. He could start a nuclear war at any time. You think that Donald Trump is dangerous and I see cable news all time. No, you misunderstand the danger. It is much larger than you realize because they see it every single day. Steve Bannon saw it every single day. That's why he said he has the mentality of an 11 year old.

That's why when Donald Trump sees this, instead of being calm and try to figure out a strategy to combat it, it's a deeply, deeply problematic issue for your White House. Hey, let's get together. Let's get, if there are any smart people in the White House, let's do a strategy meeting, right? No, bleh, scrimmitting, right? I'm sorry about that. Which now has made that hole way bigger, and all Trump's going to do going forward is keep digging. Okay, well, we got a little bit more. A couple more quotes than we have Sarah Huggabee Sanders attempting to do some damage control.

Trump had said in that statement, Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party. yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have that influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue whom he helped write phony books. God, phony is such a great dumb person word. But anyway, as we're going to get to, like he tried to put him on the National Security Council. This is a guy who not just convinced him like, hey, maybe you should pattern yourself after one of the worst presidents America's ever had in Andrew Jackson. But he was going to put him like above the joint chiefs for national security policymaking.

He really didn't have much influence over me, though. And remember when Vana left the White House, Trump had nothing but great things to say about it. And he said it was a good guy. Search his Twitter right now. I did it earlier today. Lots of great stuff about him. As soon as he had left, it was, you know, I wish him the best really smart and tough guy. That's right. And by the way, for what it's worth, Bannon also had said that the Russian investigation is phony, et cetera. Internally, he thought, not phony, as he says in the book, it's a category five, and they're sitting right on the beach. Now, let's go to a couple of these clips from today's press conference.

First here is if they want to add anything to the statements that we've just read for you. I think the president's statement is extremely clear what his position on Mr. Bannon is. I was pretty lengthy and pretty detailed, and there's not really much to clarify or to add. But once again, I think the president's statement fully addresses what his position and what his relationship with Mr. Bannon is. I think there's some stuff you could theoretically clarify, and I think that they will attempt to do that. But first, we were just talking about what position Bannon actually had in the White House. So here is an attempt by reporters to get some response to that. Sarah, the statement, the president's statement suggests that Steve Vanden had very little influence in the White House,

but the president himself elevated him to the same level as the chief of staff and put him on the National Security Council. How do you reconcile that? I wouldn't say that he elevated him to the same level of the chief of staff. And I think that in the actions that Steve took, the president was clear that it didn't have a lot of influence on him or the decision-making process throughout his. time here at the White House. And so, look, the reporters are sort of confused, but I don't think it's that complicated. He was a basically low-level intern who did typical intern shit, like make coffee, determine national security policy, you know, go run some errands or something, run the entire campaign,

typical intern crap. Be the chief strategist. If he's the coffee boy, why did you give him the title of chief strategist? Yeah, he doesn't have a nickname yet, but I'm waiting for that. I don't know what's going to be. Oh, well. Something about auto-falatio, I would suggest. Yeah, it's not going to be clever.

What would be clever, and it's a layup. It's easy, actually, is loose Bannon, right? Bannon fodder, whatever, the stuff that we do. Yeah, okay. He's not going to do any of that. He's going to be like, bad Steve. It's going to be like bonkers Bannon. No, that's way too clever.

Damn. So, you remember that for the Russian. investigation. He called up all his friends because he thought he had a really clever comeback. And they said, what is it? What is it? He said, I'm going to call it a witch hunt. Yeah. I'm not sure he's got two brain cells to rub together. It's like one and a half. One's just kind of like, I'm struggling here. Yeah. It's only going to get worse every year from here on out for him mentally. By the way, one final thing, if we could bring up a graphic 30, you're going to see that you wanted to see where they were going to come out on sides.

It appears that Matt Drudge is going with the president. No wonder, schizophrenic Steve Bannon, has been walking around with a small army of bodyguards. Okay. No, George and Bannon had always been fighting, so I'm not surprised by that. I am a little curious where the alt-right is going to go, you know, because the trolls have never been more confused. Well, it'll be interesting, I could see a way that, so it seems like, okay, they love Trump, obviously, but they also love Bannon because he represents their ideology in a more pure way perhaps than Trump does.

Yeah. But I think that, and they want Breitbart, they love Breitbart. But if Breitbart were to distance themselves from Bannon, which is difficult but not impossible, then maybe they could have it both ways. And so far I saw Breitbart's headline today was he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. So, I mean, it wasn't a strong reaction to what the president said. It was simply publicizing what the president said.

Well, we're going to find out if Bannon's alone or not based on what Robert Mercer does. So Robert Mercer, so for the progressives, it's almost all grassroots. The rich liberals give all their money to terrible people like David Brock, and they try to basically maintain the status quo. So they're of no help to actual progressives, really, literally almost none. Like all this boogeyman about, oh, George Soros, what is Soros given that has actually helped anything, right? It all goes to, like, stupid stuff at the very top, mainly to protect the status quo, okay? But for Republicans, almost all, everything is based on the guy behind the guy, okay, the money guys. So, yesterday we do the story of Rabbi Shmooley, puts out an ad in the Washington Post against Lord and New Zealand, calling them anti-Semitic.

Rabbi Shmooley doesn't have any fucking money. Okay, it's Sheldon Adelson who, and yet, by the way, it's reported as such, who gave Shmooly the money to run that ad. So it's not Shmooley, it's Adelson who's doing it, right? And Bannon is not Bannon, it's Robert Mercer. Without Robert Mercer, Breitbart actually does not have that many of your readers. You think the alt-right reads? Those trolls couldn't, that's why they like Pepe the Frog. They're like, ah, it's a cartoon. I get it. It's a picture, right?

So without Mercer, Breitbart's nothing. They go bankrupt tomorrow. And so which ways Mercer going to go? Did Mercer sanction this? In other words, by the way, just like I told you on day one as well, once they get their tax cuts, they're done with them. They're done with them. I mean, Trump at this point is just dead weight, and he only serves to increase the chance that they lose control of at least the House, probably not the Senate, but possibly the Senate. And that sort of thing could actually harm.

I mean, the tax cuts are not going to be reversed tomorrow. It's very difficult. But if they're going to be, that's an important first step. And Trump only makes it more likely at this point. So they got their money. If they want to keep their money, Trump endangers it. Plus, you know, they could die in a nuclear apocalypse. That's a side note at this point.

Yeah, I'm trying not to glow too much. But this train looks like it's headed towards the biggest told you of all time. So, all right, we'll see how Mercer reacts, and you'll know based on whether they throw Bannon out from Breitbart or not, and we'll see how that goes. Okay, before we move on to the other crazy parts in the book, I actually want to say one more thing about this whole debacle. Okay, so Michael Wolf's book's coming out, Steve Bannon on loads on Donald Trump and his inner circle, mainly his inner circle, but also Trump.

And the guys he can't stand the most are what he calls Javanka. So Ivanka and Jared Kushner. So Kissinger's quoted in the book as saying the war within the White House was the Jews versus the non-Jews. Ooh, that doesn't sound good, right? No. So Kushner is Jewish and Ivanka, Donald Trump's daughter, obviously converted to Judaism. So I don't know if that has anything to do with it. It's just a side note, okay?

But certainly they did not like each other. That's the important part. Now, we told you an overall coverage of the story that Bannon had said this is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Andrew Weissman, a senior prosecutor first, and he's a money laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner. So now, again, we had told you on this show for about a year that it's the money laundering, stupid. But that's the real heart of this issue now, as Chief Strategist confirms that. Okay, now let's go to Kushner.

This is really important. Bannon says it goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say, play me or trade me. Okay, so when they do that. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government,

the media and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew

about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. There might be yet another shocking thing that happens, which is Jared Kush. flipping on Trump.

Now, that seems unthinkable. He's a son-in-law. He's married to Ivanka. But remember, Javanka actually cares a little bit about self-respect and respectability and the mainstream. And they're always tiptoeing around the issues and trying to distance themselves a little bit. Charlottesville was bad and this and that. We supposedly care about women. Right, right.

Right, but to their credit, like, yeah, they're not quite as monstrous as Trump in some of those things. It's a good thing to criticize Charlottesville, right? What happened in Charlottesville? So, but Kushner is going to want to save his own ass. If Bannon is right, and we are right, and this is a category five, and it is money laundering, and we're not talking about, hey, that the Russians buy $46,000 in Facebook ads, whatever, we're talking about money laundering. I'm wondering hundreds of millions of dollars for the Russians for decades, okay? If that's what this is about and everybody's going to jail, could Kushner flip?

My answer is yes. I don't perceive Jared Kushner as a guy who says loyalty above everything else. If my papa is going to jail, but I'll be in the cell next to him. I see him as the guy goes, well, anyways, I got to go. So I might be right, I might be wrong, but look for Kushner flipping. Not now, we're not there yet. But if it gets deep enough, and this is not resolved, the straw that broke Trump's back could be Kushner. It's also possible.

It's based on nothing except the past people who have been indicted. But I believe in the case, it seems like Flynn and definitely Papadopoulos, like you have these people that indictments come out, all of a sudden it's big news and everything, but they had already been providing information to Mueller for some time. And so it's likely that if Jared was to flip one day, or we were to find out about it, he could have already been feeding information to Mueller for a month or two at that point. That seems to be how Mueller is operating. And one other thing about the guys who flipped, the reason Manafort hasn't flipped is because he's totally and completely guilty and he's been guilty for decades.

So he's got nothing to flip. I mean, in the sense that he's part of the conspiracy in it in such a gigantic way. Kushner could say, he's been doing that for all this time. I mean, I got married into the family a couple of years ago. I don't know anything about that, man. Okay, but I'll give you what I know and I'll do this and this and this. Might be hard since he was at that meeting. Yeah.

But it also gives him information. It gives him, at least he was at the meeting where they met with the Russian lawyer and discussed lifting the sanctions on the Russian. an oligarch, which is the central part of the deal that it seems Trump has struck with the Russians, at least according to Bannon, according to all available evidence, et cetera. So at TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

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A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to expressvpn.com slash t-y-t, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. If his own son-in-law and his beloved Ivanka are the ones that do him in, oh, that is going to be rich and wonderful.

The only thing that would be better, and I don't see how it could happen, would be if it were Tiffany. If Trump goes down. I don't see it happening. I have a tweet save, ready to go, if Trump goes down. It just says, sad, baby. Okay, we've got to take a break. But we're not done yet. Okay, we still have other revelations for the book.

We have the North Korea story. Whose button is bigger? John and I will have a button. No, we will not. Does his button work? We're going to test it. Okay. I told my wife, she doesn't follow politics.

I told my wife at lunch Trump's tweet. She couldn't stop laughing. She's like, no, come on, you're kidding, right? I'm like, it's verbatim. Okay, we'll talk about it when we come back. You're right in the middle of this podcast. We've got another great segment coming up for you. If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments,

go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member, you support the show, you support independent media, and you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now. All right, back on a young church, Jane and Anna with you guys. Read some tweets for you. Jess says, as Laura Engram spews her hatred and trash-talking, she wears a cross around her neck.

I know, yes. Hypocrat. I thought the same thing, like, oh, yeah, real, oh, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, let me judge everybody else. Yeah. Jesus did the opposite. Ishka Bibble says, Merrill Streep knew because she diss Trump, so there. That's basically their logic.

Chris then asked how complicit was Ingram with all the sexual harassment at Fox News. Oh, that was a great point. And I wish I would have thought of that. I know, right? You know what, Chris T-shirt? Because I wish we'd made that point on air. She was at Fox News. She knew, by her own definition, she knew.

And what is it? It's projection. Yes. She must have known. Everybody was talking about ails, let alone O'Reilly. And what did Ingram do? Nothing. Nothing.

God, they're the worst. Mike says every sip of alcohol, Fox News, advertised on their channel, kills brain cells. That's also true. Okay, and members of the day are Jacob Rogers and D.D. Zang. So Jacob and Dedy, thank you guys. We got Rebel Headquarters coming up for you next. And then, oh, Brent Welder is going to be on. He's the candidate who is likely to win in Kansas.

And he was, he's one of, I just read member shoutouts. I'll read another one, Brent Welder, one of the original TYT members and might soon be a U.S. congressman. So check that up at 8.05 p.m. Eastern Rebel headquarters starts. And then we have a post game today, right? Yes. All right, I want to share a story from my yoga class yesterday. I know it sounds boring, but it's not. I got called out.

Oh, that's fun. Okay, I can't. Now all of a sudden, I'm looking forward to it. Your dog is not downward enough. Okay, I don't know what it was, but I'm looking forward. All right. And Ben and I are doing old school tonight. So it's old school, old school.

So if you guys remember, check that out. t-y-tnetwork.com slash join to become a member. All right, what's next, Anna? Okay. Donald Trump loves to play golf. He was very critical about Obama when he was playing golf during his presidency, but during the Trump presidency, it seems as though golfing is a permanent fixture of his strategy. In fact, according to reports, he has spent at least 91 days of his presidency at golf courses.

And has been confirmed golfing at least 35 times. Now, the reason why there's a distinction there is because the White House is very tight-lipped about the fact that he golfed so much. So they won't confirm each and every time he does it. In fact, there was that story from last week where they literally got a big truck, white box truck, to block reporters' view of him golfing. Now, the question is, all right, well, he said that Obama was super. lazy for constantly golfing, he's already beaten Obama in the amount of time he's golfed in his first year of his presidency. So what does that mean? Does that mean he's being lazy? Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks, no, he's actually being incredibly productive. Take a look.

Can you tell me the biggest single thing the president has accomplished for the American people during his time on the golf course? I think it would certainly be developing deeper and better relationships with members of Congress, in which those relationships have helped push forward the president's agenda, specifically when it comes to helping get the tax reform and tax cuts passed. A lot of that, I think, and the success of that came from the strong relationships that the president has, and he's played golf with a number of senators, and used that time certainly to accomplish that. So much has been accomplished during this time, there seems to be a bit of a transparency issue

with his time on the golf course. We don't always get confirmation of what he's doing there despite a lot of requests. There was this incident with the box truck. Why does it seem as though the White House has some kind of issue about his time on the course? I think it's the press that has an issue at this time on the course. The president's extremely proud of the accomplishments we had during 2017. Okay. So she thinks that, hey, he's holding very important meetings with members of Congress on the golf course, and they're having discussions about legislation and what they need to do to pass that legislation. I'm sure, you know, he really gets into the weeds of that legislation on the golf course.

Because, you know, having a meeting in Washington where all the congressmen are, that would be unproductive. Having meetings either with a lot of congressmen at once, unproductive, or, hey, four at a time for 15 minutes each or half an hour each, that would be unproductive. What would be productive is spending an entire day with just three other people on a golf course over and over and over again. And some of those people are not, most of them are not congressmen. By the way, a lot of them are friends, which is understandable because he's lazy and all he wants to do is golf. And remember, they have to give him information in tweet size because, like when he's in the White House is not working anyways.

There was a report that he's watching 48 hours of television, mainly Fox. and just kvetching all day in his bathrobe. So he figures, what the hell? I'm not working in the White House anyway. I might as well go have fun and play golf. But a lot of the people on the golf course are also his funders, his donors. So he's out there raising money for Republicans, raising money for himself, and doing the corrupt thing that he claimed that he was against.

But even if you don't get into that serious stuff about the corruption and the donors, the tweets that he had against Obama golfing, We're so over the top. They were over the top. They were vicious. And for some reason, it was totally okay to pass judgment on Obama when he was golfing. But when he's doing it, it's not. That's the only reason why this is a story in my eyes.

Like, I don't, I don't care that Trump golfs. In fact, I would prefer that he golfs 356 days out of the week, 365 days out of the week. Out of the year. Out of the year. You guys know what I mean. Every day, every day. I want him golfing every day. I want him away from Twitter.

I want him away from his phone. I want him away from Congress. I want him away. Go away. Go golf, right? But it's just this like weird, like self-important, you know, I'm above everyone and everything attitude that he has that annoys the crap out of me because he has no problem passing judgment while simultaneously doing the exact same thing.

So let's just think about it in any other context. I haven't gone golfing 91 times in my life. And I run a talk show here, arguably, not arguably, obviously, not anywhere near as important as being present, not 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%. And I care, I care deeply, I work on the weekends, I work nonstop, right? This guy doesn't care at all. He is the most important job in the world. 91 days, think about if, look, forget it, take the lower number.

Imagine if someone had done 35 days of something else, like going to a movie. Could you imagine if the president had gone to a movie 35 times in one year, 35 movies? You'd be like, oh my God, Jesus, what's with the movies, right? And imagine if the movie took all day, okay? So you'd be like, what that's crazy? Imagine if he went to 91 movies. You'd be like, what are you doing? Go work.

You just put that in a context that blew my mind, right? Because I want everyone to just think about your life. Okay, think about your life for a second. You're not president. You're not, you're just living your life. Have you ever in any given year gone to the movies 91 times? 91 times. No way.

I don't think I've gone to the movies 91 times in my entire. your life, right? And this home boy is at a golf course, 91 days out of the first year of his presidency. That is absurd. That is absurd. It's literally a quarter of the days of the year. That's amazing. That's amazing. So he just doesn't care to do the job. To him, it's an exercise in ego and and making money. He's making money. I mean, he's slanging his businesses left and right, right? I mean, No one gives a crap about the conflicts of interest. No one cares about the fact that he's, you know, slanging those memberships to Mar-a-Lago and all that. You know, and part of the reason why he's constantly at Mar-a-Lago or one of his resorts

and why he's constantly publicizing that is because it drives up memberships. It's promotional, you know, Ivanka Trump running around in the clothing that she sells. I mean, come on. It's a big business strategy for them and nothing more. Look, I play a pitching part, right? The three par nine hole thing. I like it. It's fun.

And a lot of Americans love golf. But I don't, but the elites and their obsession with golf drives me crazy. So you remember George Bush with the, okay, it's really serious. We've got to go fight the terrorists. Now watch his T shot, right? But to Bush's credit, he stopped playing golf during the Iraq War because he at least understood the optics looks so bad, right? I can't believe there's someone that makes Bush look good. I know, right?

But I thought Obama played too much golf. it's nonsense with the golf the golf the golf right so but now Trump is blown them out of the water but like if you take it and apply anything else I was thinking okay we talked about the movies movies take a couple hours golf takes all day imagine if they had a different habit like if they had if the president bowled all day long you'd be like what the president spent 91 days all day long bowling it what But like he spends 91 days all day golfing and everybody's like, well, not everybody, but at least half the country is like, well, of course, he's got to relax.

He's got to clear his mind a little bit, you know, you just go and spend the whole day golfing instead of working. I mean, a quarter of the days, most important job in the world. None of us have ever spent 91 days having fun out of any given week, unless we were kids, maybe. Or retired. Yeah. But he acts like he's retired.

He's an old guy who watches Fox News all day long and does non-stop golfing and Kovetches to his friends. And goes down to Florida all the time. He's retired, except he has the most important job in the world. It's all very depressing. Okay, next. Let's move on to the topic of fake news. Yes, I love this story. Since the 2016 election, we've heard the phrase fake news over and over again.

especially from the Trump administration. Well, researchers from Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and other universities got together and decided to study the topic and see, A, who is the number one consumer of fake news, and B, how prevalent is fake news? Now, interestingly enough, the researchers found that fake news, based on their research, is not as widespread as people would have you believe. However, there are some clear signs of who is more likely to consume and believe fake news. So let's get to the numbers.

Okay, I wonder who. So on 289 such sites, about 80% of bogus articles supported Trump. In fact, the far right, approximately 10% of the sample, made up roughly 65% of visits to sites that published more than two stories that were false. Trump supporters were three times more likely to read such sites as supporters of Hillary Clinton. So to be fair, both Hillary Clinton supporters and Trump supporters were found to follow or believe fake news. However, there's a larger percentage of Trump supporters who came across that content and believed it. Now, Trump supporters read on average five false stories over the course of five weeks. Clinton supporters read just about one false stories.

over five weeks. So one of the other piece of good news is it's not that many. They read a lot more true stories than they read false stories, even for conservatives. Five false stories in five weeks is obviously one a week. It's not that much, although it is still depressingly large, in my opinion. Okay, but to me, the most important part of this is it's not equal. We told you it wasn't equal. And this whole both sides do it stuff is crap.

No, there's two different phenomenon going on here. First of all, conservatives are more gullible. They are by their nature. They believe in leaders and authority figures. And so why do big business in this country decide to partner up with more religious people? Because they thought they're easier to trick. They think that guys walk on water and there's virgin births. They'll believe anything.

And we just have to get their leaders to tell them and they'll believe what the leaders say. So what do conservatives believe? They believe that Obama was not born in the U.S., that he was born in Kenya. Preposterous, made up, but huge percentages of him believe. More than half believe that. More than half believe that Obama's a Muslim. They believe that Trump is right, that global warming is not real, climate change isn't real, it's not manmade, and that it was a Chinese hoax.

I mean, they'll believe anything. So is it surprising that the conservatives fall for fake news more than liberals, it's not remotely surprising. So I'm going to push back on that a little bit because, look, there might be some scientific research comparing, you know, how gullible conservatives are versus liberals. I haven't seen it, but if it exists, let me know. But one thing that I do want to say is I think that liberals can also be gullible if it's confirmation bias.

So for instance, during this past election, there was definitely a huge portion of the Democratic Party that hated Hillary, despised her. and the confirmation bias that they believed, right, was that she had like a terminal illness that she was trying to hide. Like, how absurd was that? It was insanely absurd. It drove me crazy, but there was a portion of liberals who certainly believed that. So look, Anna, I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, and this study shows that it exists.

So, yes, that's true. And by the way, there, some people just, a lot of people just got mad at you for saying that because they still believe it to this thing. Well, good, I don't care. If you believe that, you're insane. And if you dislike me for saying that, go ahead. head and dislike me. I don't care. Look, we, I'm, look, so first of all, if you're progressive who believed that Hillary Clinton has some sort of brain disease, I got bad news for you. I just

read about it this morning. I went back and looked at the, how that originated from the worst guys on the alt-right. They made it up, they bragged about how they made it up, and then they laughed their ass off as the right wing and the left wing believed it, okay? And the reality is she was, there was somebody with brain damage in the debates, and it wasn't Hillary Clinton. And she's still fine today. Why didn't she die? Why isn't she falling down every day? Anyway, I don't want to get back into that.

So, yes, liberals believe things that are wrong sometimes. There's a guy we covered yesterday in the woods and this raw water movement. There's the antibiotic stuff and viruses. Anti-vaccine. There's all sorts of things. I mean, I'm sorry. So, yes, of course, of course. And we're all humans.

And yes, some percentage of humans are gullible. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you're wrong on everything. But there are certain things that are not factual. Okay, but that's why I love the study, because it's not equal, it's not equal. They are more gullible. They believe in things that are wrong more often, way more often. But Anna, there's a second part. Yes, and I think the second part is way more relevant.

Okay, the second part is that the Republicans who write about this stuff are more willing to write lies. They do the fake websites way more often than liberals do. Because a person who's covering the news from a liberal perspective actually cares about facts and cares about reality. So they're way less likely to write. There's so many more conservative sites that print fake news after fake news after fake news. So if you're a conservative, you're way more likely to run into fake news because your leaders are goddamn liars. And the research bears that out. Okay, so again, based on this study, they found that 80% of the bogus articles supported Trump.

So yes, if you are comparing the amount of the content, right, doing just a quantitative analysis, the majority of the fake news is supportive of Trump, supportive of the conservative perspective. And so, yeah. And they have no morals. They don't care about truth or lies. All they care about is winning by any means necessary. To them, a lie is just a thing that they had to do to trick you because you're stupid and they think their voters are stupid and most of the time their voters prove them right.

So that's just the reality of it and that's why I think this study is so important. All right, guys, we've got to go. I got Rebel headquarters next. Don't miss that. Progressives fighting back all across the country. Bye, bye. Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast.

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