The Young Turks - The Young Turks 02.09.18: Olympics, Alt-Right Terrorism, Neo-Nazi Police Team Up, and Kellyanne’s ‘Opioid Cabinet’

Episode Date: February 10, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from February 9, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  John Moody, Executive Editor and Executive VP of Fox News, penned an explosive opinion piece on Wednesday in which he seems to suggest that the US Winter Olympics team has made themselves “darker, gayer” at the expense of racking up medals. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) counted over 100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called "alt-right" — a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits. Hour 2: Cenk, Ana, & Mark Thompson. California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter-protesters and sought the prosecution of activists with “anti-racist” beliefs, court documents show. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday floated a simple solution to the opioid epidemic that currently affects millions of Americans: “Take some aspirin.” “I am operating on the assumption that this country prescribes too many opioids,” Sessions said during a speech at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, according to a report by the Tampa Bay Times. “People need to take some aspirin sometimes.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's at t-y-T-network.com slash join. Thanks for watching. All right, back on the Young Turks, Jank, Mark, and John, with you guys. We've got two great stories coming up with for you. But first member shoutouts, Pestrick Hart and Liza Whirling. Thank you so much, guys, for being members.

We've got more exciting announcements coming up soon about more town halls with a variety of people. And thank you for making that happen, the party happened, the whole show happened. And of course, you get all of the young tourist content ad free if you remember. So t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. And one tweet for you guys, don't you see how I'm Locos, says,

if you raise the minimum wage, people buy more. With the increased demand, business needs to hire, duh. And so that is in essence. That's complicated. That's complicated. You're using too many big words. So you just synthesized in like a quarter of a tweet with the word, duh, included.

what 137 studies have said. Yeah, they really wasted a lot of time. Yeah. They should have just asked, don't you see I'm loco? Don't you see I'm loco, the real truth. All right, what's next, John? Okay, you got some stuff for you.

This week in Montana, a man in the state's labor department decided to take a stand against ICE when an interesting situation arise. So his name is Jordan Deirdall Roberts, legal secretary with that department since 2011. It was told on Tuesday that he should help process subpoena requests from ICE, according to the independent record. So he, these requests from him, said, I don't think I can help with that. I began talking with management about what the deal was. But I pretty much understood at that point.

These were going to be subpoenas for information that would end up being used to hunt down and deport undocumented workers, perhaps in the way that we've been reporting on a number of cases where they're looking for people who've been here for 10, 20, 30, even 39 years. as we had a case this week, and then trying to deport them. And he decided, apparently, that he did not want to be a part of this. He tweeted this, it would have been my responsibility to prepare the information and hand them off to ice. I refuse to aid in the breaking up of families. I refuse to just, quote, follow orders. This isn't an easy decision as it puts me in a delicate financial position.

And he finally said, I'm drawing my line in the sand here. Cooperation with this regime is not acceptable. Damn. That's just terrific. I was just a little bit. Yeah. Look, when he said, I refuse to aid in the breaking up of families, I refused to just follow orders.

Oh, that was powerful. So I've told you this before. I've now started to hear by cases of churches hiding undocumented workers in the basement. Oh. And not just churches either. And you know, you can't help but visualize, or at least in my case, because maybe I'm a little more obsessed with pop culture. the opening scene in Inglorious Bastards, where they're hiding in the basement.

And you're like, oh, my God. I was going to say, in Nazi Germany, minus the cinematic reference. But you're right. I mean, that's not just cinema. That really happened. People scrambling into the shadows and having to remain there and have to hope that wherever they're hiding, there's someone like this guy, like this great American who says, no, I won't do this.

I won't break up a family where the leader of this family, the father, the mother, whatever. It has been in the country 30 years, or 20 years or 10 years. I mean, these are real family units. Sorry, Jack, but just, I couldn't dream more. Yeah. And look, I referenced the movie because it's a little softer to put it in the form of a movie, but you're, of course, right. I mean, among the thousands of times that had happened and Frank, in that case, hiding in the attic.

and people hiding people away because people were coming for them. And they are. And these are a lot of times in the cases that John was referring to, people who are almost all law-abiding who go to ICE to check in with them regularly in the case of the guys who've been deported. And by the way, that's why some people are now hiding. Because if you follow the law and you check in with ice, sometimes they slap an ankle bracelet on you,

sometimes they just whisk you away to jail. And then two weeks later, your family gets a call that you're now in a different country and you're gone. Yeah, for a guy who's been reporting in all of these years who built all these different guys, the guy in Ohio built a business and had all these workers and the whole community supported them. And a bunch of Trump voters supported them. They're like, wait, I didn't want you to take this guy, right?

But no, they're coming for all of them. Yeah, yeah, it's scary. I mean, in the last year, immigration-related arrests are up 42%. And, I mean, it's not impossible. but these sorts, they're happening now like every week, like that Jordanian man, 39 years he was here. His wife is a U.S. citizen. He has multiple daughters who are U.S. citizens. He owns multiple businesses, employees a ton of people. And this congressman, Tim Ryan, had been defending him in the process for about 20 years now. He had had a deportation order back in 2009. And because ICE was not the same thing and the leadership was not the same thing back then, they did not actually enforce it.

And they didn't go and they didn't deport him for nine years. Now he's gone. He had to go. He sent back there. His elderly mom greeted him. And that's it. He's gone. Can't see his family anymore. And I know, look, look, we have, our immigration policy in this country has never been what I would call moral at all. It's had tons of problems. And that has largely been a bipartisan thing. But the people who will have you believe that this is the same thing on both sides, it is absolute insanity. You can look at some aggregate numbers of people who were stopped within 50 miles of the border and then imply that that's the same thing as breaking up a family of four decades, but it's not. A country is not

supposed to be seeing this. This is shades of what you were talking. This is shades of the Japanese internment. This is shades of the darkest times in the U.S. And they're just ramping up here. And so Trump and the Republicans keep saying, oh, it's the criminals. And look at what happened in the shooting in San Francisco. And now they're putting in all sorts of political ads. But wait a minute, you said you were just going to go after the criminals. These guys are not criminals, but you're still going after them. They couldn't, so many of these keys, they couldn't be more law binding. That's why their whole community, including Trump voters rally around them.

But they're still coming for them. And now the dreamers are going to start to get deported beginning as early as March if they don't have a deal. And right now, they're not anywhere near a deal. So it could be. Sorry. No, no, just to finish the thought, it could be that they're going to, take as they're doing now with the adults, but in this case, a lot of those kids don't speak the native language of whichever country they came from, because they came when they were two,

they were four, et cetera. And so they're going to drop them off in the middle of Nicaragua and go, good luck. Like, what? Like, what are they supposed to do? Yeah. And these are some of the most violent countries that they are technically linked to, right? When you talk about Nicaragua or Central America, this is, I mean, if you spoke Spanish, If you grew up there, you might only have an even money chance of surviving. To be dropped there from America, it's crazy. And what I was going to say, Jang, just as you mentioned, the Dreamers, I mean, statistically, again, if you just look at the statistics, it's the most productive group of immigrants, regardless of status that you could possibly find, overwhelmingly well-educated, overwhelmingly employed. It is a violation of what he was saying and the banner they're flying, which is only going to go after criminals.

You always hear about MS-13. That's his big thing. I mean, they'll just, they dredge up these arguments about criminality, and then they go after people who are not criminals, law-abiding people who've built families here over decades, as John was saying. And it just shows the utter bankruptcy of this entire immigration deal, and flawed, though our immigration policy may be in this country, it's never been as high profile and jackbooted as it is now. And by the way, so you know the real facts, studies show that undocumented immigrants commit crime at half the rate of American citizens.

So American citizens, unfortunately, commit crimes at twice the rate of people who are undocumented. But we're not kicking ourselves out. Logically so. We shouldn't take them out either. Last tweet from Jordan Roberts here, he says, people have asked why I'm doing this if I have a child, because now he doesn't have a job anymore. He said, I'm doing this because I have a child. I want to be able to look my child in the eye. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-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-Fu-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 not learn 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.

Yeah, need more people like that. Yep. All right. Last story. Okay, final story. The executive editor of Fox News is in trouble today for an editorial attacking the U.S. Winter Olympics team. And the editorial has already been pulled, but we're going to read a few excerpts for

you. He said this, unless it changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics since 1894 has been faster, higher, strong. Stronger than should be. It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to darker, gayer, different. If your goal is to win medals, that won't work. A U.S.O.C. official was quoted this week expressing pride, what else, about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a frankly embarrassing laundry list of how many African American Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year's U.S. team.

No sport that we're aware of awards points or medals for skin color or sexual orientation. Insisting that sports bow to political correctness by assigning teams quotas for race, religion, or sexuality is like saying that professional basketball goals would be worth four points if achieved by a minority in that sport. White guys, for instance. Instead of the two or three points awarded to black players who make up 81% of the NBA. Any plans to fix that disparity? Didn't think so.

interesting that that's the disparity he thought of. And so he's mad that we shouldn't be bowing to these quotas. Is he saying that there are quotas? No. Does he have evidence that he's presenting that there are quotas? No. But they're proud that we have a diverse representative group of

Olympians, Olympians, and that is enough for him at this point to imply that the entire thing is suspect, because how dare we have out of the closet gaze serving on the Olympics? Okay, so So this guy's a very important person at Fox News.

He helped Roger Ales set up Fox News. He's been there for a long time. He's the executive editor and executive vice president of Fox News. Now, after the controversy, somebody from Fox News is like, well, I mean, he's not involved in the day-day news making decisions. By the way, that's not remotely true. Another person inside the building said, yes, he is. Okay. And I've seen the internal memos that were leaked from Fox News.

John Moody's all over them. He is intimately involved, and since Ailes left, and now, of course, Ailes has passed away, but he's one of the most important guys in the building. And so part of the reason that they put up the editorial without checking with others is because he was so senior that they're like, who's going to question John Moody? So they just printed it. So now, when I saw it in the headline, I was like, okay, but let me read the whole thing. Now, it sounds terrible, and I'm sure that it's going to be he's going to have these, you know, a bias, redidious. way of interpreting the facts, but let me read his facts first. And then he didn't have any facts. I was like, no, you're kidding. You wrote this article

about how you don't, you think that it is by definition biased to have darker athletes, let alone gayer, because you think so? I thought that he would have, like, I know that he wasn't going to have, well, we had a downhill skier who is white, who had a quicker time than the black skier, but they eliminated him anyway. Like, that's inconceivable. We go based purely on the time, right? Okay, but I thought, I know that he can't do that, and I knew that, but I thought he might go with an argument of, well, like figure skaters, it's judging. And let me show you white athletes who scored higher in earlier rounds, but when they got to the, you know, the, where they were going to make the decisions, they had the gayer, gayer, they had the gay of figure skaters, which they have to discriminate in favor of to find them. Anyway, so somehow their scores became more inflated.

No, no, he didn't even bother. He's got nothing. He has no evidence, no facts, no nothing. So that leads to several different things. One is look at the assumption he makes. The assumption is if things were fair, well, obviously the whites would get it. If things were fair, obviously the straight people would get in. It is assumed that people in my category are the ones who should have the spots.

And if you gave it to the gay athlete or you gave it to the black athlete, you must have cheated to give it to him. Yeah. I mean, most of the sports are simply who went faster, right? So that assumption is amazing. And by the way, it's, and so it's not about John Moody. So it isn't, he's a very pivotal character at Fox News. And yes, Fox News apparently sets the agenda for the president and for the president and for the, country, God help us. But it's also more important because it gives you an insight into the

right wing way of thinking. And this goes all the way back, you know, throughout American history, but as it regards to athletes. So if you don't know, this is an amazing story. Back in 1966, NCAA championship, had Kentucky, which was a powerhouse at the time, up against Texas Western. And Kentucky, as usual, had five white basketball players who represented them. Texas Western, had for the first time ever, five starting black basketball players. And all the writers at the time thought, these black athletes, they're never going to beat the white basketball players. They have no chance, right?

And then in the articles, you go back, and it's amazing. The quotes are like, compare them to monkeys. They say, well, you know, they might be athletic and they might score a lot. In fact, Texas Western was known for its defense and its discipline. And that's exactly what they did to beat Kentucky. Spoiler alert. Okay. I was going to bet on that game.

But they said, oh, if you let the black athletes go on the court without any white teammates, it'll be chaos, right? Because they don't know what they're doing. They're not smart and they can't handle it. So the assumptions were always, the white kids deserve the spots, right? But if you want to bring in black kids, I guess what do you think blacks are good in basketball? Okay, give it a shot, big guy, right? And so that kind of racism has been with us for a long, long time.

Yes, thank God the NBA and the other major sports have largely gotten past it. You could argue not completely, but certainly a long way towards fixing that. NFL's got some issues. And, well, with Kaepernick, et cetera. But in John Moody's world, he thinks that white people are discriminated against, otherwise they'd have all the Olympic spots. So does it look like we're discriminating against white quarterbacks, for example, like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rogers?

You remember when they bench Tom Brady for a black gay quarterback? I would make one more point as it pertains to the Olympics. To become an Olympic athlete, you have to sacrifice so much of your life. You have to achieve at such a high level. No one's giving you a break for race or orientation of any kind. You may have to swim upstream against a lot of prejudices of the sort that Jenks been mentioning. I mean, you can think about back in Major League Baseball to Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron, these guys, just to participate in the sport of baseball, Jackie Robinson had to make it through this gauntlet of racism.

And to break the home run record, Hank Aaron, who was obviously a black ball player who broke the home run record, he had death threats against him. And although you're having to achieve, is my point, through this headwind of race. and all the other sorts of prejudice to kick in when you're gay, et cetera. And then you're becoming an Olympic athlete. As Jenks says, most of it's done on time and basic performance that is quite measurable. I think these Olympians are extraordinary. And so when you read an article like this that doesn't recognize any of that,

that doesn't recognize those insane sacrifices that I have to make, it just, it whips your head around. It's like, again, it's like something out of 1950. It's just crazy. Or 1936. Because so Jesse Owens, you might not know this, and I learned it recently, it's a really interesting fact. So Jesse Owens goes to the 1936 Olympics in Germany. Hitler won't, in fact, not only did Hitler not shake his hand, he wouldn't shake any of the athletes' hands because the Olympic Committee told him you either shake all the gold medal winner's hands or none of them.

And so he stayed home because Jesse Owens won four gold medals. But what you might not know is when he came back here, even FDR wouldn't let him in the White House. And he said that he was, he didn't want to be seen as soft on the Negro issue. So he didn't let any of the 18 black Olympians go to the White House. And then they asked Jesse Owens to go on a publicity tour for the Olympic Committee. And he said, sorry, I'm not going to do that, given how you guys have treated me. You know what Jesse Owens did the rest of his life? He became a janitor and then a gas attendant.

That's how we treated Jesse Owens. Forget how the Nazis treated him. That's how we treated him. Okay. And so now to Jackie Robinson, he actually does mention it, right? John Moody does in this article. So give him credit for, you know, say, look, Jackie Robinson was good. He broke the color barrier. That's a good thing. Okay. So he does the obligatory thing. But then he says, now remember, you should be like Jackie Robinson. And he quotes Robinson as saying, don't complain, work harder. But that makes us sound like Jackie Robinson was the only one who was good enough to make it into the major leagues. And he didn't, he just worked harder. And if all the other blacks at the time had just worked harder, they would have made it into the major leagues. No, they were not allowed into the major leagues.

If you had a fair system, I know for this mindset, they think a fair system is, I get all the spots. My people, the people that are like me get all the spots, you get nothing. And if we allow you to take one spot, you should thank me. If we had no discrimination back then, I don't know what percentage of the league would have been black. half the league, a third of the league, a quarter of the league, but it wouldn't have been one person, that's a preposterous argument. And then finally, the great irony that I'm sure it never occurred to him at all is. Here he is saying, well, why don't white people and gay people have all the spots?

Well, don't complain, work harder. And in this case, there is no discrimination. They can get all the spots they want. They just have to be faster and stronger. But instead of doing that, what does John Moody do? He complains. All right. Okay.

They are special snowflakes. In case of the Winter Olympics, I guess that makes sense. Maybe they can compete in that category. Okay, we got to go. Mark Stang, thank you, John. Great job. Anna's going to come back. We got the story for you guys of unfortunately some cops in America, some police departments.

Working with neo-Nazis to arrest left-wing protesters. It is deeply disturbing. So we'll be right back. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through. 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 t-y-tnetwork.com slash join, and you get the whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now. All right, back on the Young Turks. Control left says, but wait a minute, we can't get the control left, drop it. Did I tell you that at a time, we're going to sit around awkwardly for 13 seconds. Okay, let's just, let's move on.

We normally drop it. We don't really, okay, anyway. All right, fine, we're moving on. Control left, but Jane, well, no, I'll do it. But, boom, bomb, Washington on power panel. It's like being there. Nice job. Okay, did I mention that we are this fight of power panel sponsored by shopty.com?

This is my favorite. And by the way, I just want to give some special love to the crew at ShopTYT because they ordered me a shirt that fits. Today's signboard brought to you by Jank Yugar. Finally, control left says, but Jake, it's a well-known fact that stopwatches have a liberal bias. And Trauma Queen says, funny, I always thought Olympic competitors had to qualify for their Olympic team. Yes, in fact, they do, and that's why John Moody's full of crap. Okay, Anna, what's next? Okay.

The Guardian has just reported that evidence indicates that California police worked in conjunction with members of the alt-right and neo-Nazis in order to pursue counter-protesters. These are people who went out and protested against white nationalism, and even though some of them were victims of violent crimes, the police in this case allegedly went after those counter-protesters as opposed to the perpetrators of the violence. Now, California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists and sought the prosecution of activists with anti-racist beliefs. Now, there is evidence to support these claims because there were three individuals who were the counter-protesters

who apparently got arrested during this rally that took place in Sacramento, California in June of 2016. Now, as soon as they got arrested and they were dealing with the legal system, they lawyered up. And their lawyers were able to find audio recordings involving a police officer literally speaking to a white nationalist who was in custody at the time and essentially letting that white nationalists know we're going after these counter protesters. I'll get to those details in just a second. Now the records, which also showed officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizer's identity, were included in a court briefing from three anti-fascist. activists who were charged with felonies after protesting at a Sacramento rally. Now, the cops are alleging that they weren't cooperating with them. And the way that some of them got charged is unbelievable. There was a black protester who was stabbed in his abdomen

and they were attempting to prosecute him, even though he was the victim of the violence. Steve Grippy, chief deputy district attorney prosecuting the case in Sacramento, denied the claims, noting that his office had filed charges against one member of the traditionalist workers party, or TWP, the neo-Nazi group that organized this particular rally. So in one phone call with Doug McCormick, identified by police as the TWP affiliate who acquired the permit for the Sacramento rally, California Highway Patrol investigator Donovan Ayers warned him that police might have to release his name in response to a public records request. The officer said he would try to protect McCormick, okay?

Here's his exact quote. I'm going to suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something until this gets resolved. He said to the suspect, and he also requested records of the permit and noted if I If I did, I would tell you. So he didn't know who had requested his name. And he's like, if I knew I would tell you. Okay, so let me be clear about the context of all this. So in that case, the guy's going to organize a rally.

I'm not, and you can disagree with me, but I'm not that bothered that he's saying, look, I get it. You're part of this white supremacist group and people are going to want to know who you are and you're requesting the permit. And we'll keep that your identity hidden. I don't know if that's the legal thing or not. And if it turns out that's not legal, then I withdraw what I just said, right? But, and then he goes a little extra by saying, hey, don't worry if anyone tries to find out your identity, I'll give you a heads up. I don't think you have to do a neo-Nazi that favor.

So, okay, but if that's all that was, I'd say, okay, that's bad, but it's not the end of the world. Okay. But the case that Anna mentioned earlier, and there was a number of these. But that African-American protester was stabbed in the abdomen, chest and hand, right? So, but they consider him the suspect. Yes. Okay. So then, okay, you're like, but you know what?

Maybe they got into a knife fight and he got stabbed, but he also stabbed someone else. That's possible, right? And just because they're neo-Nazis doesn't mean you shouldn't protect them. We have freedom of speech in America. And if people came and committed violence against them, you should arrest the people who committed the violence. Okay, but so when you now look at the facts of why were they thinking the guy who got stabbed was the suspect and they were actually targeting him. The cops were targeting him in that case. Their evidence was that there was a Facebook photo of him holding up his fist.

And they said that that was a, quote, black power salute and that he supported, quote, anti-racist activism. and it demonstrated his, quote, intent and motivation to violate the civil rights of the neo-Nazi group. Yeah. So, okay, he gets stabbed in the chest, hand, abdomen, et cetera, that is not good evidence. He holds up a black power salute. That is great evidence that he intend to violate the civil rights of the neo-Nazis, so he's the suspect. Oh, my God. No, that fact pattern is atrocious.

So luckily, the actual victim in this case, which is the black man who was in the hospital, was never charged. However, the cops did recommend 11 charges, and the offenses included disturbing the peace, conspiracy, assault, unlawful assembly, and wearing a mask to evade police. That might have been one of the things that pissed them off the most, because what do I say all the time on the show on these cases? which is the biggest crime in America is one that's not actually illegal, that's disrespecting a police officer. So you wear a mask? Well, hey, you're trying to evade the police. I don't care that it makes me angry. And I'm giving the cops the benefit of the doubt here. And I don't think they deserve it at all. So, I mean, the more likely explanation is they just sympathize with the white supremacist. But if you're going to give them the benefit of that, oh, you're wearing

a mask, that pisses me off. I don't care that you got stabbed. I'm going to consider you the suspect, and for the, the prosecutor makes the decision of whether the case goes to court. But the cops made the decision to charge him with 11 counts for having his fist up in the air in a salute and wearing a mask. But of all the white supremacists that brought weapons to the rally, by the way, there was five different guys that they identified as having knives, and several of the anti-fascist protesters were stabbed. only one white supremacist was charged.

All the other ones, there's a guy named Punio. He's another member of this TWP group, the white supremacist's neo-Nazi group. He was in the vicinity, the cops agreed that he was in the vicinity of another victim at the time, and he had a knife on him. The cops go to talk to him after he's been arrested on a separate charge of domestic abuse. So now you might look, now normally if a cop goes into a situation where he's, this guy is now involved in another act of violence, he might be a little circumscept, they're like, hey, I don't know about this guy, right? No, the cop goes in and says him while he is in jail, that can you help me to identify your counter protesters so that I can get them instead of you? And he says, quote, we're pretty much going after them. We're looking at you as a victim. Wow, wow, wow. You always want to think that this is like one or two bad actors, you know, but then you see how the ranks of the cops in this case close.

And, I mean, as you say, in kind of an awful grotesque way when you've got a stabbing victim who's hoping that the cops are really their allies, right? I mean, when you're already in a very, very intense exchange with this right wing, with these supremacists, white supremacists, you know there's going to be trouble, and you figure that the peace officers there are your allies, and to see this grotesque situation unfold. As I say, you hope it's a few bad actors, but the more you get into the story, you realize, yikes, it's worse than that. It's kind of an institutional thing. Right, and so I don't know what percentage of this police department consists of the bad apples,

But what I do know is that, you know, time and time again, we have these conversations about people not trusting the authorities, right? Running away from the authorities as soon as they want to stop them. Walter Scott is the first person that comes to mind because he ran away from a cop and literally got shot in the back several times as he was running away. This is the reason why there is some portion of the population that doesn't trust local authorities. Because in this case, you have counter protesters who are not feeling protected. They don't feel like their local police are there to protect and serve. In fact, they feel like they're counterproductive more than anything. And they're going after them with, you know, potential prosecution because they have the audacity

to practice their First Amendment right and counter protest these white nationalists. Again, who were the ones with the knives? Who were the ones who got stabbed and sent to the hospital? It's just insane to see this happen. And by the way, you know, this isn't just unique to California. What we're noticing with similar rallies and protests throughout the country is that cops will work with the alt-right or these neo-national, neo-Nazis, in order to identify the counter-protesters. So another example is this. Let's go to Graphic 38. U.S. prosecutors targeting anti-Trump protesters in Washington, D.C., this was during the inauguration, relied on video evidence from a far-right group with a record of deceptive tactics. So we know that they, I mean, we know personally from personal experience that they lie,

they put out fabrications, and to know that the cops rely on that to arrest protesters who spoke out during the inauguration is scary stuff. And at an Oregon right event, police allowed members of a right-wing malicious-style group to help officers arrest an anti-fascist activist, and this is all reported by the Guardian. And so, look, we on the left don't want violence. So people that are both in the mainstream and in the left wing say if you're an anti-fascist, don't commit acts of violence is a terrible, terrible idea. And if they had evidence on them, should they be arrested?

Of course, you can't commit acts of violence. Now, but look at the propaganda. It makes it seem like the Antifa guys are the violent. Wait a minute. In Charlottesville, who killed who? It was the neo-Nazi guy who killed the anti-fascist, anti-racist protester and injured dozens more. So, and in this case, here's another case, Yvette Falarka, in the same protest that we've been talking about here. She's a Berkeley teacher and an anti-fascist organizer.

She was stabbed and bludgeoned in the head and they went after her as the suspect. I mean, but why would you make that assumption? What a bizarre assumption. If I was a cop and somebody comes to me and she's, and you're bleeding and you've got to think, you know, a nod on your head and go, oh, what have you been up to? And to me, like the clincher was the thing I read to you before, that their so-called evidence was, oh, he did a black power salute. Right. Even though he's been stabbed over and over again, we're going to go after him. So, but the right wing puts out the propaganda that Antifa is the violent ones.

And in this protest, they put out the propaganda that Antifa was the right wing ones. And now, unfortunately, ended and embedded by some of the cops there. So that what do you hear? You hear the guys who got stabbed were the violent ones. Yeah, it's, and if you look at the neo-Nazi propaganda and you look at the philosophy underlying the neo-Nazi movement, it's a violent philosophy. So when you put that up against the Antifa movement, which is really, and again, I understand I'm biased against neo-Nazis, sorry, but I mean, even on just the merits, you know that you have essentially an unarmed group or certainly a far less committed to violence type group on the law. left than you do on the neo-Nazi right. And so if you were just going in and working on a presumption, I would presume that the violence will come out of the neo-Nazis. They're the ones,

as it turns out, who are armed and overwhelming numbers versus the antifas. So again, just objectively looking at this before the game begins, you have to know that the violence is likely to come from there. And then to the basic point, you know violence is unfortunately a likely result. You always feel good when these things settle out and there hasn't been any. And that's why the cops and their neutrality is so very important. And so to think that they aren't at the end of the day in neutral or any way, it again, it's profoundly disappointing. Yeah. And we're having these insane conversations in America now about like, well, I mean, they're very good people on both sides. No, look, if you're a neo-Nazi, you signed up to be associated with Nazis

after they murdered 13 million people. That's right. Like you thought, oh, that's a good thing. I'll sign up for that group, right? So, like, to Mark's point, your political philosophy is predicated on enormous violence, a history of the worst violence the world has ever seen. So if the cops were to make any assumption, it would be a fair assumption to say that, hey, we should be careful about those guys because they sign up for a group that has historically

lived and breathed violence. But we're not asking to make the cops to make assumptions. All we're asking them for is to be neutral and actually judge the facts. And instead, they make the assumption that the black power salute is so dangerous that even if they got stabbed, that they're the suspect and not the neo-Nazi who signed up to be a Nazi. Right. And who had knives. I mean, that's crazy.

We go out of our way to try to present both sides because we want to be fair. And yeah, I'm sure the prosecutors and the cops will have their side and say, hey, some of the neo-Nazi protesters were also disturbed or, you know, bothered or, you know, after the knife bite began, some of them also got hurt. So you should hear them out, but their explanations so far have been horrific. Let's talk about the opioid epidemic and what the Trump administration is failing at when it comes to helping solve this problem. Kelly Ann Conway has been assigned a very important job here in the U.S. She is now part of the so-called opioid cabinet. In fact, she holds these opioid cabinet meetings in order to find. solutions for the opioid epidemic here in the United States.

Now, unfortunately, her strategies so far, or her ideas so far, don't really lead to any true solution. Let me give you the details. She has taken control of the opioids agenda, quietly freezing out drug policy professionals and relying instead on political staff to address a lethal crisis that claims about 175 lives a day. So what is her solution? What is she pushing for. Call for a border wall and to promise a just say no campaign. Perposters. 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. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Because they believe that the opioid crisis is something that has been imported from Mexico, not a problem that has originated here in the United States from the over-prescription of painkillers. All right. So among the people working on the public education campaign, that Trump promised is also Andrew Giuliani, he's actually Giuliani's son, who's a White

House public liaison and has no background in drug policy, Rudy Giuliani's son, to be specific. So the organization within the government that has the responsibility of dealing with the opioid crisis is severely understaffed. So they have high level officials within the organization. They usually have about seven, and right now they have about three. Okay? And so that's a little bit of an issue. And another thing to keep in mind is that Kellyanne Conway has no background in dealing with this. Her career has been in polling in politics, not public health, substance abuse, or law enforcement, which is why she's not coming up with any real solutions. And she hasn't even expressed any general interest in this. In other words, there's

nothing in her history that would suggest that she even has an appetite for learning about this and suggesting solutions. And of course, as Anna says, they've frozen out the people who really have a sense of how to shape and craft a drug policy and what this issue is all about. So I think this is another example of them politicizing something, which, and I understand everything gets politicized, but this is, she is a political hack, and she's going to turn this into a political hack job. She's already doing it. And I'll tell you why. The most interesting part is why they're doing this. But first, let me give you even more overwhelming evidence about how little they care. So to Mark's point and Anna's point about, hey, how

Where are the actual experts? They actually exist. Rich Baum is the office's acting director. So that's what is colloquially known as the Drugsar Office within the executive branch. And he's served in office for decades and is an expert on this issue. He is not invited to cabinet meetings where they discuss this issue. So the expert is uninvited. Kelly and Conway goes instead.

Now, one of the top political appointees until recently was a 24-year-old with absolutely no experience. And then it was revealed that he had lied all over his resume and then he stepped down. And he went into the office when he was 23. His only other experience was working on the Trump campaign. So filled with these political novices that have no expertise whatsoever. But we're not the only one saying this. Republican Senator, Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia says, I haven't talked to Kellyanne at all. And I'm from the worst state for this. So she's like, it's killing West Virginia. And if she's in charge, how come I haven't talked to her for one second. What the hell's going on here? How come we're not getting any help? And then one last

one. When asked, hey, who's in charge here and who are the experts? They said, well, Nina Schaefer was here until recently. She's now at the Heritage Foundation. But she managed, quote, the development of the HHS response to the opioid abuse crisis. Well, okay. She's at Health and Human Services. She managed the opioid response. So they asked her about it. And through a spokesperson at Heritage Foundation, they explained she's not an expert on the topic. So the one person you referred to as the expert, even she says, I don't know, I'm not an expert on topic at all. I've not got a different job. Okay, so why?

Why on God's green earth would you do this? I mean, you campaigned on it. There's a lot of your voters who have been hit really hard by the opioid crisis. I know Trump only cares about his voters. you just look at Trump voters. I mean, they've been hit really, really hard. He won West Virginia by an overwhelming amount. Why not help West Virginia? Because if you went to the actual source of the problem, it's pharmaceutical companies. You want to know who the number one lobbyists in America are for which industry? It's not oil. It's not banking. It's

pharmaceutical companies. So they are the top donors in the country. So that's why if you want to, if you got this problem and you said you'd do something about it, you don't want to touch those guys. They pay your bills. So what do you do instead? The wall, the border, the Mexicans are bringing in all the Oxycontin. What? You buy it here. Why do, what Mexicans would have nothing new with Oxycontent, right? And just say no. You know what just say no means? I'm not going to address the problem. Right, exactly. And by the way, I actually think, you know, it's a smart political strategy. It's a terrible thing to do for the American people, obviously. But it's a smart political strategy. Because first of all, Trump's base, the voters that have been hit hardest

when it comes to this opioid epidemic, they will stand by Trump no matter what. All they need is for him to stand at a podium, you know, give them the real talk. You know, they think he's so real and authentic and tell him, you know, I'm taking care of you. I'm taking care of you. Everything's going to be great. Let me go ahead and distract you by the others. Let me go ahead and distract you by the Mexicans. Oh, we got to talk about the border wall. So as long as he keeps touting this border wall, and as long as he keeps distracting them

with hatred toward foreigners, they'll be happy. They'll be happy. As long as he keeps blaming others. I think Anna is absolutely right. I mean, you know, it's funny because you're thinking of what Jenks making so much sense. He talks about West Virginia.

And then Anna's exactly right. Here's how you take care of the West Virginia. You feed them a cookie full of, hey, those brown people coming over here. They're the biggest problem with this country. And there's a bigger problem with this administration, and we've seen it from the very start. You have a bunch of people who've never done

anything. Most of them have never administered much of anything at all. And they're all running huge complex government agencies in charge of very important policy, like an epidemic of this sort, that is killing people in this country. You know, I think of Rick Perry, who's

over there at Energy, he doesn't know what the hell he's doing, right? He couldn't find his butt with both hands. And this administration is filled with people like that. And they're running important agencies and handling important policy. Yeah, so let me disagree with you guys in part, because I hear you guys, for people who don't have family members involved in the opioid crisis, easy enough, wall, the

Mexicans did it. Oh, okay, yeah, charge, right? And do they know that Nina Schaefer is not actually an expert on the opioid crisis? No idea. Do they know Kellyanne Conway is running this instead of the experts in the field? They have no idea. So I agree with you guys on all that. But the one thing is for the people who have been affected by the old period crisis,

and I'm reminded of the dad who went around supporting Trump and played the guitar at all at a lot of his rallies. And he was so excited that Trump was going to help. And then come to find out that Trump's not helping at all. In fact, this office that's within the executive branch, Trump's going to cut its budget by 95%. I mean, they're pretty brazen about it. And that was even before the 95% cut. That dad came out and he's like, I don't, it doesn't look like he's doing anything. I'm starting to worry.

So if you had a family member who suffered through this, you know it wasn't the Mexicans. You know that they have pill mills all over West Virginia. You know that it was started with the pharmaceutical companies and the oxycontas and the other drugs. And you know that first of all, those drugs are killing half the people alone before they even go to heroin. And you know that those are the drugs that are leading to heroin and the real gateway drugs. Because you lived it, you know, whether it was your son or your daughter or your dad or your grandma, because it's now all the different generations because people go in the hospital. They got a trouble with their back.

They just get hooked on the painkillers. So you know it ain't the Mexicans. So I think there's just, when it gets the people actually affected, I think there is a limit to how much they can trick them. Oh, I think you give them way too much. I think, yes, there's some portion, especially the gentleman that you just mentioned that get it, right? But this is also the same demographic that has experienced, you know, so-called trickle-down economics, and they're still supporting it. They've already experienced what it's done to their wages, what it's done to their lives, and they still support that ideology. I don't know. I just, I feel like there's some portion, a significant portion of Trump's base that will stand by him and believe anything he has to say.

He was right. He could literally murder someone on Fifth Avenue and they'd still support him. I have to sign on to that, too, Jank. I mean, although I understand what you're saying. I think that there is merit to it. I just think that the general point of sort of identifying politically with Trump and your personal identification, especially now in this most divisive time, I just think they have a death grip on this cult of personality, which is Donald Trump, and they're not going to let go. Ironically, they're addicted to Trump and they can't kick it. Yeah. Okay, we've got to take a quick break here.

When we come back, an issue that might have at least me not necessarily on the progressive side. And it's a doozy and it's pretty controversial. So buckle up, brace for impact. We'll be right back. 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. 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 Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.