The Young Turks - The Young Turks 01.19.18: Opioid Crisis, Carl Higbie, and Tom Cotton

Episode Date: January 20, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from January 19th, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  Donald Trump is planning to slash the budget of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in what marks his administration’s second attempt to gut the top office responsible for coordinating the federal response to the opioid crisis. The plan would shift the office’s two main grant programs, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas grant and the Drug Free Communities Act, to the Justice and Health and Human Services departments. Hour 2:  Cenk, Ana, & Jayde Lovell. Trump appointee, Carl Higbie, resigns over racist comments he made one his radio show in 2013 & 2014--talks about Black people & their “lax” morality. Carl also talks about not liking Muslim people. Senator Tom Cotton sending out “seize and desist” letters to stop trying to contact Tom Cotton. 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join.

Thanks for watching. Justice delayed is justice denied, but power panel delayed is not power panel denied. Drop it. All right, Jake, you're John Arnold. Oh, no, here comes Abby Martin. Off the top rope. What's going on? Abby, good to have you here.

Good to be here. All right, rock and roll. All right, we've got a lot of stories for you guys. I'm going to read two quick tweets for you. Do I ever read slow tweets? They're always quick tweets. Davey M says Republicans talk as if Puerto Rico is some foreign country. If you asked them, I bet you if you've polled them, right?

I think Americans at large 13%. would say that. Higher. Higher. Okay. Anyway, Sarah Mack says, this is the second media poll that amidst Senator Sanders. Sounds like this is a new strategy for marginalizing him by pretending he doesn't matter. Although, to be fair, at least in what I saw, none of the other likely more establishment

candidates were on there either, other than I guess Biden. But you didn't have any of the others. You didn't have Gillibrand or Booker or Kamala Harris. No. Okay, got you. I don't know if you saw this booker yelled at people earlier. I did see that. We're mansplained.

So they claim. All right. So we got a lot more stories for you guys. So John, take it away. Okay, let's do that then. One year into the Trump presidency, it would be inaccurate to say that Trump hasn't done anything. He hasn't made any moves when it comes to addressing the opioid epidemic. He has been making moves.

In fact, recently, they just happened to be in the exact wrong direction. And we have a great example of that today when it comes to funding. So we have information about his upcoming budget plans when it comes to the National Office of Drug Control Policy, and they are planning to cut virtually every dollar from two of the major programs in that office that have to do with combating the opioid epidemic. The plan that's currently in place would shift the office's two main grant programs, the high-intensity drug trafficking areas grant, and the Drug-Free Communities Act, to the Justice and Health and Human Services departments. The move overall is expected to result in a reduction of about $340 million or 95% of that office's budget entirely, which is a lot.

I mean, it's not everything. Yeah, fake news. Bank news, you said almost everything. That's only 95%. So remember how we always say that under Obama, we got 5% change? Well, he's just finishing the last 95% of it. But anyway, so they're saying, don't worry so much about this. Trump administration officials say the grants would be administered by larger agencies.

Yes, okay, so they're not going to be getting the funding that's established. But once they get moved to this new place, then the funding will probably come about there. But you should understand that this is coming after last year where the White House Office of Management and Budget floated cutting the grant programs completely. And so there was a lot of pushback against that last year. So then we come around to this year where they're like, okay, we're cutting 95% of it and moving it. It'll be fine over there, I'm sure. I'm not exactly convinced at this point.

Okay, so when I first started reading this story, I thought, look, I think I might defend Trump here. And in fact, maybe I'll talk to John about taking it out of the rundown. If they're just moving stuff, who cares, right? They have every right in the world to move it from one part of the executive branch to another. But silly me to have trusted the Trump administration for half a story. When I was reminded, oh, right, they tried to cut this budget completely, wipe it out. Wipe out the entire organization just a little while ago. Well, then that's incredibly important context.

Then wiping out 95% of its budget and telling us, don't worry, later, that will reappear somewhere else, becomes a little less believable. So, no, he said he declared the opioid crisis a national emergency. I remember the poor dad who really believed in Trump, and he went around to a lot of Trump rallies, and he sang a song, he had a guitar, and he was trying to draw attention because his son had died from this crisis. And then they interviewed him afterwards when Trump originally basically said, I'm not going to spend anything on it, right? And he was like, no, no, what happened? And he was heartbroken over it. Well, what happened is on every single issue, he lied to you. And so now, a national emergency, but I'm not going to spend any money on it.

Where does it make me money? How does it go to my hotels? How does it go to my donors? This doesn't help my donors at all. In fact, perhaps some of the Republican donors are pharmaceutical companies who don't want you to do anything about the opioid crisis. And all of a sudden, whole departments go away. Interesting how that works. This is a crisis that's killing 91 Americans every single day.

Superceding car crashes now. I mean, more Americans die from car crashes from, you know, from opioid addiction than car crashes. I mean, Trump made the declaration that he's going to, you know, he's going to really tackle the opioid epidemic. What did he do? He picked people within the big pharma industry to run drug management, like he's doing everywhere. And, you know, I just interviewed the lawyer who's attacking the actual drug pushers, Mike Pep Antonio, who's suing the drug industry because he's saying it's not the doctors. Yes, we can blame addicts. We can blame doctors.

It's the drug pushers who prey on vulnerable, poor communities. and exploit them. And we need to go after them. But when it comes back to Trump, no, he's just packing and lining the pockets of his friends, just like he does with every problem in every scenario. And with moving this, saying, you know, we're just moving it, we're not killing it. Really fast it reminds me, we just reported on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They tried to stop it from ever being established years ago.

Then they try to kill it year after year after year. And they haven't yet been able to do that. So what do they do? They put someone in control of it. They requested $0 for the budget. It's like killing it by any other name or something like that. And yeah, so it's not just this, of course. You cut those two programs, well, that's not the only thing that they could have done

theoretically funding these programs to deal with the crisis, but it's part of a long pattern. So that same office of National Drug Control Policy, he still hasn't named a permanent director of it. Seems like if you care about this epidemic that you have labeled the national emergency, you'd at least have somebody other than, wasn't Chris Christie supposed to do something about the epidemic? Maybe Jared is doing it. You know, he takes a day off on his trips to deal with the peace process and he fixes it.

But then it's not just that. Also remember last year, he got some good press for allocating some funding to deal with it. And I remember reporting on it. It was 1% of what experts say would be needed to adequately deal with the epidemic across the country. And we, I mean, you said that he declared a health emergency. I've also found references he called it a national shame, a human tragedy, and vowed to which. You know what else is the human tragedy? The attacks on marijuana and cradam, which are actually legal alternatives.

And in a lot of these states, I mean, he's just basically overriding states' rights here and doing these giant drug wars on drugs that could actually help people with pain management and alternatives to heroin and opioids. It's disgusting. Jeff Sessions' insane reefer madness. What decade is he from? Yeah, exactly. He's from the Kibler Elf cookie box. Decade, whatever that was. Yeah, for me every decade, but. So, yeah, they told us about gateway. When I was a kid, marijuana, gateway drug, gateway drug.

Well, we found the gateway drug. The jury's in. It's prescription pain relief, so-called drugs. And they lead to, first of all, they don't have to lead to anything. They just, you get addicted to the painkillers, and a lot of people just died from that. And then some of it leads to heroin, and a lot of people die from that. Some of it leads to fentanyl. And a lot of people die from that.

And so we know what the gateway drug is, but they don't want to do anything about it because they make money off the gate. They need billions upon billions of dollars off the gateway drug. Marijuana, now in states where it's legalized, they are starting to make money off of it. But all of a sudden, Republicans are like, marijuana is not so bad, right? But overall, they're still fighting it because the drug companies are like, God damn it, that's just a plant. It's harder to make money off a plant.

We have to try to create some fake version of it. That's even more addictive. so that they could patent it, have a monopoly on it, kill the free market, and buy off these corrupt politicians. Finally, this epidemic is so out of control that even Republicans, especially in afflicted states like West Virginia and Ohio are like, no, don't agree with Trump. We really got to do something about this. And, you know, it's not just us saying, no, he's actually trying to kill the program and not move it. Shelly Moore Capito from West Virginia and Rob Portman from Ohio, both deeply conservative Republicans are saying, no, don't move it, don't kill it, don't defund it.

For God's sake, we need this money. Literally, we're dying out here. And he says to the Republicans and the Democrats, I don't care, you're not a donor. Go ahead and, you know, go die somewhere else. And the final thing I want to say is, as will be the case with literally every other discussion of how expensive it would be to do things we want to do. I'm going to compare it to the $1.5 trillion. They just decided to hand to corporations and the extremely wealthy.

We could cure it. I mean, we'd at least have the funding to cure this epidemic. And it would be a tiny, tiny fraction of what they just casually gave away to people are already wealthier than the emperors from throughout human history. Damn it, John, that's such a good point. Whenever they tell you, oh, an opioid crisis, I mean, your son died from it, and you believed in Trump and all this. But we don't have the money.

They just gave away one and a half trillion dollars to the richest people in the country. They have the money. They just don't care about you. The good news, at least, is that as you pointed out, a lot of people around the country care about this and a lot of politicians at least pretend sometimes that they care about it, and maybe they do. And so the good news is this budget is not actually final. So if people talk about this, if the media covers it and if you reach out to your politicians,

they can theoretically put pressure on the White House to reverse this move. That doesn't mean that the attacks against this office will end. They've been doing it frequently, but at least we can perhaps keep some of that funding for the near future. Anyway, yeah, I think why don't we jump in in the next start before the next break. We're just hours away from a potential government shutdown, and the big development in terms of the negotiations around trying to get continuing funding for the government. So far today was a meeting between Donald Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer that happened earlier today. It was apparently just those individuals and some aides and things like that. It wasn't one of these big meetings where there's Republicans and Democrats there.

It's a more intimate meeting, which can be scary when Trump is a part of the intimate meeting. But anyway, it was possible at that meeting that some sort of deal could emerge that would continue to fund the government while also addressing some of the issues that were focused on right now, like dealing with chip funding and also some sort of legislative fix for DACA. It doesn't really look like that actually happened, though. Now, Chuck Schumer had this to say. He said we had a long and detailed meeting. We discussed all of the major outstanding issues. We made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussions will continue, and the clock will keep ticking, by the way.

Trump tweeted that there was some positive, you know, action and stuff like that. But he's also been tweeting all day that the Democrats want to defund the government so that illegal immigrants can steal your job or something like that. And another White House official who was at the meeting said, that it was cordial, but that a lengthy list of obstacles still remains. And there's less and less time for any sort of lengthy list to be dealt with. So this is relatively easy, actually, if you ask me. And because I know the Democrats' nature, the problem is the Republicans in Trump. So it's not a political statement.

I actually blame the Democrats a lot in this case, not for the shutdown because they're not fighting hard enough. All right, so let me get to it. What does a deal look like? Okay, they approved the budget. They put a chip back in, that's the children's health insurance, okay? Now, the Republicans just took it hostage in September. It was always approved. There was never an issue.

Everyone agrees it should be done. It's overwhelmingly popular. Even the Republicans agree, right? But they're like, we're not going to fund it because we like taking hostages. Because we know that when it comes to January, we'll say, oh, we'll give you chip back. We'll give you your kids back after you give us everything we want in the budget. Now, the other thing that needs to be included, so that's easy. That's why Republicans took that hostage in the first place, right?

Other part of it is the DREAM Act. So that has 70 to 80% approval rating in the country. There's a lot of Republicans who are in favor of it, not most, but enough to get passage. All the Democrats are in favor of it. Trump claims to be in favor of it. and so overwhelmingly popular. Now, Trump wants a little bit of money for the wall. I hate that.

I can't stand that. But I know the Democrats. They'll say yes to that in a second, okay? And voila, that's your deal. It's not that hard. So what's blocking it? Trump's like, okay, I'll do a clean chip. I'll do a clean DACA.

No, I won't. No, I won't. You guys are terrible. He's an idiot. He's a total moron. On Chip, the Republicans took that hostage and played politics well, even though they're disgusting. thing. And Trump didn't realize it and he tweeted something yesterday that blew up the whole deal.

Like, wait, why isn't this just passed on its own? Yeah, great. Let's do that deal. And the Republicans are like, oh, God, damn it, you're so stupid. Right? So that's literally what happened. And so, and the Republicans are always like, I never, they never want to give the Democrats anything. So this deal is actually super easy. But, but right now they still don't have it because they're, they're obstinate people. In Washington, they are definitely not named Democrats. I wish Democrats would be more obstinate. I mean, there's a lot to say about this.

I think it's important to remember how we got DACA in the first place. And that's 2006, the Immigrants Rights Movement. There are millions of people in the street, you know, pushing back with Bush's racist policies. And when Obama got elected, it was in large part, the sweeping majority was in large part through the Latino community, six years into his presidency. It took him six years to give them what they wanted. And that was just this cursory executive order. And here we are.

I mean, there was nothing really permanent in place, and it's just because of, it was just basically, basically an acquiescence to the voting block, because that's all they really care about is the voting block. So I see this is kind of arbitrary, considering the Democrats have lined up behind mass surveillance, endless war, and giving Trump whatever he wants. So what the hell really is this about? It seems very superficial to me. Yeah, look, I think that the Democrats and Republicans had done their usual strategies, not talked about it, and they don't have to. say it. Where Republicans demand everything, Democrats demand, not demand, ask for one thing, okay, because the budget has everything in it, plus they took Chip as hostage, right? So, and they were going to play that usual kabuki theater where the Republicans say, rah, we want it. And Democrats go, there's nothing we can do until Trump came in and going, hey, what's going on here?

What are we doing? Okay, duck, a chip, shitholes. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Just blew the whole thing out. So, look, they're going to get probably back to regular order any second now, and they're going to shut Trump up, and the establishment's going to win again, and you'll have some cosmetic changes. But all, but 99% right-wing policies will continue on abated. You're predicting that today they will actually have a deal? No. But here's my fun prediction, having nothing to do with policy. So tonight, Donald Trump has a celebration of his first year in office. Okay, this is anniversary. It's at Mar-a-Lago, but they're trying to pretend that Trump cares so much about the government shutdown that he will not go to Mar-a-Lago, okay? But there's all sorts of rich people going, and it's driving him crazy.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Steve Wynn is heading the event, and he's an actual billionaire, and he's actually been successful with casinos, which actually is not that hard unless you're Donald Trump. Did you know people actually give you money at a casino? Just walk in and give you their money. Trump is the only hotel in Las Vegas that doesn't have an actual casino because they, like, iced him out of the strip. Somebody's just in this weird parking lot.

You know why partly because he proved in Atlantic City, he's the only person in the world who cannot run a casino. The house always wins unless it's Donald Trump. But he's dying to go down there. So either he's going to make the deal to like, like, okay, okay, what do I sign? I don't, doc, a ship, who cares? I don't even get chocolate chips, you get it, right? Whatever, right? I got to go to Mario Laco, Steve Wins waiting for me, he's actually rich, right?

Or all that stuff that he sent all of his guys to talk about in the press room today. Oh, Donald Trump cares so much, he's not going. Even if it's not signed, he's going to go. Yeah, that's my prediction. Yeah, I just don't think we should give Democrats the whole, oh, you really care about DACA considering it's the millions of people who are pushing this legislation in the first place. So I just am so disgusted with this resistance, this Mick resistance going on. I was disgusted when I saw a tweet from Mitch McConnell, which didn't like sort of imply that they were trying to force the Democrats to choose between funding for health insurance for low-income children or for the dreamers. It literally had a picture that had both and said see which one they choose.

Yeah, gun to your head. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and by the way, just a reminder, because I said that I'm always going to do this. Funding chip each year would cost less than 1% of the tax cuts we just gave to millioners and billioners. On the other hand, do they really deserve it? They're little kids who were sick. The other guys are the richest people in the world. So, I don't know.

You seem to have some weird priorities, John. I'm caring about the sick kids. Well, we've got billionaires to take care of. Okay, all right, let's say quick break here. We're not done with this story yet because there's a lot more blame to go around. And then I want to talk about the Democrats, to your point, Abby. that want to cave on this and get nothing in return. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR.

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So hold, hold, stay right here. Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free. These are just two of them. Every day we do it. So go to TYT. network.com slash join and you get the whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now. Young Turks, Anna Kasparian, Jake Hugary. Jay Lovell's back with us. All right. Everybody goes side Q nuts, okay? So, Jade,

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I'm going to buy that one. That's too funny. It's too much fun. And Jade is now officially my Ronnie Jackson. And she needs to do a press conference. She can tell you I'm going to live to 400 years old. 400. I've done just as much research as Jackson did.

Okay. So we've got too many stories. So let's get started. Okay, Casper, go. Okay. A Trump appointee has just resigned following an investigation into comments that he made in his radio program, his internet radio program. Now, his name is Carl Higby, and he was appointed to be part of the Corporation for National

and Community Service. That is actually a government entity that oversees programs like AmeriCorps and other governmental programs that help with disadvantaged individuals, with education. So it's an important role within the government. But CNN did an excellent investigation into some of the statements that he made back in I'm sorry, 2013 and 2014, and it was a doozy. It was a doozy to say the least. So let me give you the details on that. Now, Carl Higby, while recounting a time that he placed an advertisement to give away free firewood said the black race had, quote, lax morals. He added that black women think breeding is a form of government employment.

elaborated on this a little bit. He said one person was actually cordial to me. Every other black person was rude. They wanted me to either load the wood completely split it for them or some sort of, you know, assistance and labor. And I believe that this translates directly into the culture

that is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race. It's a laxed morality. Well, look, among the different issues I have with them is grammar. I know it's the last of the issues, but it's a lax of morality.

This guy is a government official. And I'd like to note much more importantly that he's a government official whose job is to direct the public image and messaging for the department that he's in. Right. So he, some would argue he wasn't the right fit for that role, which is why he has decided to resign following the reemergence of some of his statements. Now, we have audio of some of the things that he said. I read you some of his quotes in regard to black people, but he is an equal opportunity

hater. He has gone after the LGBT community. He's gone after Muslims. He's gone after pretty much everyone. And he also thinks it's totally acceptable to shoot undocumented immigrants as they attempt to cross the border into the United States. But let's go ahead and listen to his comments about Muslims. Go back to your Muslim shithole and go crap in your hand and bang little boys on Thursday nights.

I just don't like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. Like, Carl, you're racist, you're sexist, you're fat. I'm like, Jesus Christ, I just don't like Muslim people because their ideology sucks. People are like, well, you can't hate somebody just for being Muslim. It's like, yeah, I can. Do you hate people who rape little boys? Well, they're said, of course, they're just terrible people.

Well, yeah. Well, A, most Muslims believe that, you know, to have sex with men, it's okay, which I don't like it all. But second off, it's the ideology of a child molester. The ideology of a Muslim is what I don't like. They are screwed up in the head, and it pisses me off. I just wish, like, the far right would get their stories, like, at least be consistent. Because on one hand, they'll go after Muslims because of what they do to gay people. And then they'll turn around, like, this guy talking about how they're in favor of having sex men and having sex with other men.

I mean, get your story straight. Like, you guys need to be a little consistent with your propaganda. And it's not like he's such a big fan of gay people either. He has, just as he collated being a Muslim with raping little boys, he did the same thing for gay people and talked about how people who are gay are more likely to rape little boys. So it seems like a... Yeah, you know, so that's the thing with right-wingers. They pretend to be concerned about some groups of people when they're just,

all you have to do is wait a couple minutes for them to turn around and hate them. those people too. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, I don't like Muslims because they discriminated against gays, but the gays are the worst, right? So, I mean, this guy, and he said both things, right? So, and Anna, you're right, you know, how many times have you heard right wingers talk about, oh, no, the only, hey, no, it's not that I'm bigoted against Muslims. It's just they're throwing gay people off of rooftops. And, you know, if you're a real liberal, you know, don't you hate the way that Muslims treat gay people? If you're talking about fundamentalist right wing Muslims, Yes, I hate the way they treat gay people.

That's true. That's their right wing. That's their fundamentalists. That's their loony tunes like this guy, right? And hey, birds of a feather, okay? When you are loony tunes, also hate gay people, right? And they also hate Muslims. Why?

The connecting fiber is hate. Right. And also, again, it's not like he has this, you know, obsession with only hating one group of people. He seems to hate everyone. I mean, it was amazing how many, you know, video snippets. CNN was able to find of him hating on several different groups of people. And what I noticed in all of these statements was this consistent theme of utter ignorance. I mean, okay, so what he said there about Muslims being in favor of men sleeping with men,

obviously that's not true. And then he says this about African Americans, which I found fascinating. The whole African American thing gets me whipped up because it's like 99%, and I'm paraphrase, phrasing here of people who write down African American have never been to Africa. But, but that, okay, I'm Armenian American. I've never been to Armenia. Saying that I'm Armenian American means my background is Armenian. That doesn't mean I've been to Armenia.

I mean, it's just this, like, weird ignorance that he has. And why does I get under your skin? Why does it bother you that they refer to themselves as African Americans? I mean, what would you like to refer to them as? Yeah, that's another good question. or I don't want to know, but you know why they called African Americans because they came from Africa. Do you know how they came from Africa? Right.

Okay, so, but he doesn't care about any of that. And Anna, it's funny, I wrote down this, like, I don't know, you guys might have seen me take down a note. The one word I wrote was ignorant. Yeah. Because, sure, it's super easy to call him bigoted and racist, and he is all those things. By the way, we'll get to his apology because he did apologize. But to me, the more important part was the ignorance. it's like majority of Muslim men want to have sex with other men.

Like, where is that poll coming from? That's the one thing, you know, I'm, I feel like I'm a broken record sometimes, but the one thing I can't stand are people who just get their facts wrong. And, you know, this is why we have science, but it seems like that a lot of Trump era, Trump-type politicians, their main point is that they just don't care what the facts say. This guy didn't misinterpret a study. He just made things up because they aligned with what his,

opinion was. He's done the same thing about PTSD, so not a particular group. I mean, he went after, he's a former Navy SEAL, and he decided that it would be a great idea to go after fellow members of the military that are suffering from PTSD. He said that they're weak-minded. No, they've seen some of the worst violence imaginable. They might even experience their own friends and peers get killed in front of them. They're in the line battle, they're seeing the worst things and you have the audacity to say that they're weak-minded? I mean, it's

ridiculous. There's one other video that I really want to get to because this is what he had to say about people trying to cross the border and what he would like to do to them. This is really difficult to listen to, so I want to give you a warning, but with that said, take a listen. What's so

wrong with wanting to put up a fence and saying, hey, everybody with a gun, if you want to go shoot people coming across our border illegally, You can do it faux-free, and you can do it on your own, and you'll be under the command of a National Guard unit or a Border Patrol. I think stick a fence six feet high with signs on it in both English and Spanish. As you cross this border, this is the American border.

You cross it. We're going to shoot you. You cross my border. I will shoot you in the face. I will go down there. I'll volunteer to go down there and stand that border for, I don't know, a week or so at a time. And that'll be my civil duty. I'll volunteer to do it.

If you are crossing the border, if you jump a fence in the vicinity of the American border, guess what? You, regardless of how dumb you are, you know exactly what you are doing. And you know you're breaking the law. That's why you're doing it probably at night where nobody's looking. So if you start putting that out there, say, oh, man, those Americans are shooting us when we jump over the border illegally. Okay, let's not do it anymore. at t yt 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 it's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech and one of the best ways is with express vpn express VPN hides your IP address making your active AD more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers express VPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminers

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That's EXPRE S-SVPN.com. Check it out today. That was embarrassing, honestly. There's really no words, rather. Yeah. So look, but to a lot of the folks, not just him, but the people listening to that, whatever that radio station was or internet station, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're human beings, guys. And why are they coming here?

Because they're really rich and got it and they have all the power? No, they are going to come here. They're going to work their ass off in, and usually in farms, who are the hardest jobs in the world, so they can send money back to their family because they really, really want their kids to be able to eat and have a chance, etc. And so, I mean, if they were like people coming to rob your bank or house or grocery store and you had this whole thing and then most of them did that, I don't know. Maybe you could conjure a scenario where you would hate them so much that you'd want to

shoot them in the head and execute them. But that's not the scenario. They're like the Irish shit came over during the potato famine and the Italians, and you name it, right? People who were desperate to come. Why did the, you know, we talked about the stories of the ship that tried to land during the Holocaust that was filled with Jews and we turned it back. Now, those people, they didn't come here because they were in great shape. They came here because they were running from the Holocaust, right?

But so people who are desperate cross the, the border in the middle of the night, a lot of them, hundreds of them die of thirst, die of the conditions out there. They found 593 bodies at one point. And they went through all that for their family, and you'd like to murder them. I don't. So I worry about decency. And if, you know, look. Decency is long gone in this country. It just is.

It just is. And, you know, these are radio shows that he did back in 2013 and 2014. So this is before Trump was even really a serious thought as a presidential candidate. And this kind of rhetoric's been going on. And we, you know, what this revealed to me more than anything is at that time, we were kind of living in this bubble where we thought, oh, you know, yes, racism, discrimination, all of that exists. but it's covert. It's not out there. You know, people tried to, you know, hide it.

But no, it was out there. We were just completely unaware of it. I mean, he felt bold enough to say those things. And then when he got a little bit of backlash, he was incredibly defiant. Oh, people think that I'm being too harsh. But yeah, I hate this group of people and I hate that group of people. Then he gets appointed by Trump. Oh, what a shocker.

Someone like Trump would appoint someone like him. And then he decides to resign after there's some backlash in reverse. regard to what he had said in the past. So I do want to read his, his apology for a second. Before you get to that, one last thing, if you think, oh, man, there goes to those libs calling him racist again. He said, you know, they were like, well, you're racist. I was like, fine. If that's the definition of it, then I guess I am. Right. So we don't deny it. He doesn't deny it. I'm back then. And so of the 330 million people in the country that you could have found to do this job. And this job, by the way, goes to helping some of economically disadvantaged

communities, all across the country, irrespective of race, et cetera, and helps with volunteers like AmeriCorps. It's a really important job, and his job is public messaging for those. Of all the people in the country, this is the guy you chose for that job. It gives you a mindset that's more important about the Trump administration than it is about this one guy. Now it's apology. All right. Here is what do you have to say. He said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry that my words were published. I am sorry that I said them in 2013. Those words do not reflect

who I am or what I stand for. I regret saying them. Last night I informed the White House that I was resigning so as not to distract from POTUS's many successes, hashtag no excuses. No, no, as usual, bad grammar, many success. But anyway, overall, though, it is a good apology. I don't know if it was PR person at the department who wrote it for him. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt. That was a solid apology with, not because I got caught, but because I said them and I shouldn't have said them. And I think that's probably the most shocking part of the whole story. Not that this guy said all of these horrible, racist, sexist, anti-Muslim, anti-LGB things. Not that he was appointed under the Trump presidency, but that he then chose

to resign. Because if, when Donald Trump says these sort of things, we seem to accept that. So the fact that someone's actually had the decency to recognize that what they did is wrong and then resign for it, I'm surprised, to be honest. Yeah, no, like I said, I think it was a, if he has actually learned from it, and that's a giant if, you'd have to have a fuller conversation about it. And maybe if you brought him on, he might say, hey, look, I was a knucklehead. Now, look, it was a couple of years ago. It wasn't a long time ago.

It was 2013 and 2014. I don't know why he would have had that transformation, but maybe he did it. And he says, I should have never said them. So instead of the tough guy on the radio, like, oh, I don't care what people say, I'm going to be racist and it's going to be awesome. He says no excuses here. But Jade is right. I think the most salient point is he said bad things about Muslims and he's gone.

Trump is trying to block Muslims from coming into the country. It's ditto on immigrants, et cetera. So, yeah, that guy should not be working at that job. That is certainly true. But Trump also shouldn't be working at his job. And he actually controls policy. Yeah. All right.

I'm going to end it there. But my speculation is he hasn't learned anything. He's just in, you know, the national conversation all of a sudden and is probably getting national attention and doesn't like it. So, but that's just my take. It happened a couple years ago. So, you know, it's not like you change that much from being that hateful. But anyway, okay.

Let's move on to Tom Cotton. Senator Tom Cotton does not like getting letters or any type of correspondence that criticizes him or protests anything that he's doing. So he has decided to send out cease and desist letters to any activist that he doesn't like. That is something that was reported by the Arkansas Times. And they found that members of an activist liberal group known as Ozark Indivisible had been receiving these cease and desist letters ordering them to stop trying to contact Cotton. So the letter actually threatened that. with possible police action.

The letter is immediate notification that all communication must cease and desist immediately with all offices of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton. All other contact will be deemed harassment and will be reported to the United States Capitol Police. So huge distinction here. They claim that there's two categories. One is communication that contains a threat. If you're threatening a United States center or anyone, the cops should come talk to you.

That is not freedom of speech. That's a violation of the law and something that people should be concerned about. The other is what they call repeated communications that are harassing and vulgar. By that standard, I could arrest half the internet. That's preposterous, right? And you're a senator, you're supposed to represent these people. You can't say, well, some of the people that I respect, turns out they don't like me. Can I get them arrested?

No, that's not how it's supposed to work in a democracy. And even under that lucid definition, there is no evidence that there was repeated contact that was, uh, contact that was vulgar or harassing. It was just repeated contact with people he didn't agree with. And so he's decided that that should be deemed harassment. I'm sorry, but that's not how the law works. Yeah. So one of his staffers, uh, tweeted about this. And from that tweet, it was pretty clear to me that this was not about direct threats toward the senator. It was more about communication that the senator did not like. So, uh, according to John Noonan, uh, who is a staffer for cotton, he said that the,

tone was threatening, no threats were made, but the C word was invoked. Oh, okay, so let's go ahead and trample on people's First Amendment rights because they use words that the senator is not in favor of. Well, again, I mean, half our staff could have at least a quarter of the country arrested on that standard, and we don't believe that. And we're not senators, we're just, I mean, a senator is supposed to be more responsible, not less responsive to the people he represents. And you know they're not real threats because he said, they're not threats.

But they feel threatening. No, feel threatening is not the same thing as threats. Because look, if you're calling the cops on people, that's really serious. Especially if you're a senator, the cops are going to take that really, really seriously. Some random dude gets insulted on Twitter. He calls the cops, good luck to him. Cops aren't going to care at all, right? But a senator comes in with a lot of power and says it's a threat.

They're going to come to your house. I mean, that really, really could happen. So make sure it's a threat and don't use that for like, I didn't, I felt insulted. That's not a thing. It's not that Tom Cotton is like some sort of lovely, like, huggable guy and he just intimidated when people use foul language because he's a good Christian guy. Not at all. This guy is also in favor of waterboarding.

So he wants people to use, American people to use physical violence against others. But then when someone comes into his office and calls his staff the C word, that's unacceptable. They have to cease and desist that straight away. So, you know, where's the standards here? I mean, and also, like, what happened to people on the left being the snowflakes? You're a U.S. Senator, you are supposed to represent your constituents. Some portion of your constituents aren't happy with the job you're doing and they're voicing their opinion. It is your job to respond to that.

It is not your job to violate their First Amendment rights and, you know, squash any and all communication that they could have with you. I mean, this is crazy. Are you really that weak? Like, you're a tough guy when it comes to waterboarding, but you're not so tough when it comes to communicating with your own constituents. Yeah, torturing other people is easy. Yeah. But if you call them a name, he's like, oh, but that hurt my feelings.

Okay. And last thing about this, look, when they got heat for this, the staffer puts out the tweet that Anna read you, they're going to put out the most damaging one they had. It turns out the most damaging one they had didn't even have a threat. in it. So there was actually, it appears based on what they've said, no actual threats. It was all things that, that insulted them. And this, like, the seawords, the worst one they had, but they sent out a bunch of them. So there must have been things that were way less than

that that they actually were thinking of having the cops investigate you for. And final piece of irony is cease and desist letter. What are you using lawyers? I thought you guys were against lawyers. I think that's actually I know you said the last thing, but this is, I think, the really scary part of this issue. It's not that this guy is a bit of a snowflake. I mean, that's kind of funny, but I think

what's really scary is that he's telling people I'm going to use the full force of the law to stop you from speaking your mind. And if he can get away with it, if these letters actually are successful in intimidating people into silence or if he does actually come after them if they continue to correspond and

he uses the legal system to stop them. That, I think, is the next step in this Trump presidency. That's a great point, Jade. And so that as First Amendment issues, you use your First Amendment not only to speak out, but also to ask your government to address your issues, right? I mean, that's part and parcel of the First Amendment. It's the most important thing in the First Amendment. And he's saying, if you do that again, I'm going to have you arrested. And what is that? That's big government. That is this guy using the might and power of the United States government to try to intimidate you into not speaking.

I was led to believe that the conservatives cared about the First Amendment and cared about the Constitution and didn't like big government. I was led to believe that. Yeah. We got to take a break. When we come back, an update on the sentencing of Larry Nasser. He was the Olympics doctor, and that story is amazing, especially when you hear some of the testimony from the Olympic athletes.

Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and come watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Come become a member. Thanks for watching either way.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad-free. Access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcast. at apple.co slash t yt. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.