The Young Turks - The Young Turks - November 30, 2020

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Melania drops a hilarious Christmas decor video. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. 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. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jake Hugh Grant and Consparing with you guys. So we've got a big show ahead. Arizona and Wisconsin have certified. We've got updates for you guys and the Republicans go to war against themselves.

That's an awesome story. Actually, it's two to three awesome stories. The donor story is great. The Charlie Kirk story is great. That's all coming up in a little bit. You know what else is great? I just found out just a minute ago that shoptut.com is doing 25% off sale sitewide. Gone, gone, gone.

It's apparently Cyber Monday. So I need you to panic. Go get those of your fire t-shirts. we've now fired Trump about 28 different times. Now, if you included the court cases, nearly 40 different times. 25% off, everybody. And, oh, you've got to use the promo code. Treat yoself.

Treat yoself. Okay. Okay. How's that not fun? God, you're so... Oh, Jake. It's fun for us. I don't know if it's fun for you.

No, it is. Because, first of all, I'm the king of misunderstandings, right? Like, so I say treat yourself, not because that's how I talk, but because otherwise, people aren't going to know how to spell it, right? But people will take, oh, Jake, boomer, loves Neurotandin, and I can go on and on, right? Thanks to the DNC was great in 2016. Like, so we're going to do the Neartanus story today as well. I can't wait, I can't wait, but let me just preface it by saying, Jank tweeted something kind of, not kind of, it was, it was sarcasm, right? And sarcasm doesn't go over well on Twitter because everyone on Twitter automatically assumes the worst in people.

So it was just funny to read your tweet and automatic, like, I know you so well. I read it and I'm like, oh, he's being sarcastic. He's kind of being, you know, a D here. But I got tweets from people, you know, in the liberal blogosphere for lack of a better phrase. And they're just like, is he being serious here? And I'm like, I don't think so. But yeah, we'll talk about it in more detail. Yeah, and look, that's part of the theme of today.

But it'll be a giant theme of the next four years, which is this enormous disconnect between the left and establishment Democrats. The left is expecting Che Guevara and Joe Biden's going to deliver Strom Thurman, right? And so I'm being too mean by saying Strom Thurman, but that's a guy he agreed with on non-racist policies, some racist policies. Anyway, so put aside race. No, Biden's going to give you, all here, let's go with this one, Bob Dole. And the difference between Che Guevara and Bob Dole is gigantic.

And so I think that's going to lead to a huge explosion. So anyways, let's get going because there's so many great stories. Yeah, so I thought, you know, we have some pretty serious stories to get to. But let's start off with a little bit of fun, a quick story on Melania and Christmas. So every year, the First Lady does this obligatory tour of the White House. and the premises in order to, or the area just to show what the Christmas decorations are that year. I mean, never mind the fact that it's, in my opinion, kind of insulting to basically force the first lady to do this every year. But anyway, here's Melania Trump. You know, you see the

video, it comes out. She's not talking or anything. She's just like walking around the White House pretending like she doesn't know she's being filmed with a smile on her face as she's looking at the superfluous amount of trees in the White House. And, you know, the decor is fine. I mean, it's certainly better than what she did with the White House Rose Garden, besides which we all know that she did nothing. Some interior designers or decorators went to the White House. They did all the decorating. And then she shot this incredibly cheesy video. But again, let me just reiterate. I don't think that the first lady should feel any pressure or any obligation to engage in this. I personally love interior design. And I feel like, if you

If I were the first lady, I would, and you know, officials came to me and said, Madam First Lady, you must now show off your decorating skills or your cooking skills or anything like that. I'd be like, actually that sounds kind of fun. But I shouldn't feel obligated, neither should Melania, neither should any First Lady. Now that I got that out of the way, I thought that it was important to show you guys the version that most people didn't get to see, the version where Melania Trump actually shared her real thoughts about Christmas and a litany of other political issues that the Trump administration has gotten heat for.

Let's watch. They say I'm complicit. I'm the same like him. I support him. I don't say enough. I don't do enough. No. Where I am, I put, I'm working like a asthma.

I know. Christmas stuff that, you know, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and the curation, but I need to do it, right? Yeah, but then I do it. And I say that I'm working on Christmas. they're planning for the Christmas. And they said, oh, what about the children? They were separated. Keep me a fucking break.

Okay. I guess the White House needed to get rid of that version, and a little too harsh, a little too honest for the American people. Yeah, so that's leak tape of Melania that we, of course, put over the new footage. So let me be clear on a couple of things. I don't think it's a little insulting to have the First Lady do all this decoration nonsense. I think it's massively insulting. So let's say my wife became president of the United States, and they say, okay, Jane, now you have to do Christmas decorations.

Get the out of here. No, no, I'm not going to, I have a whole different job. I mean, Melania doesn't have a job. She was a model before. But it doesn't matter. It's still insulting to her. It's whether it's a wife or a husband who has a completely different job or no job for them to say, okay, now be the maid where you go, around decorating the house. No, no, it's ridiculous. They should completely end that practice. Right, but the only difference is, Jank, I mean, we haven't had this scenario yet, but if you were the first man, right, like assuming your wife got elected as president, you were the first man, they wouldn't ask you to do Christmas decorations, they wouldn't ask you to remodel the White House Rose Garden, they would come up with some other gender-specific, task, right? So it would be like, I don't know, the first man hunting day or something like

that, right? I just can't imagine them continuing that tradition if it were a man who were the spouse of the person who got elected as president. 100%. But who knows. No, no, 100%. Although the Democrats would. They'd have the guy who were dressed in an apron and make a fool out of himself and all that stuff, right? But the Republicans would never do that because it's bad optics. And so, and Democrats don't understand optics. They smear optics all over themselves. And so, but look at all the assumptions that the media has. Why is the media continuing this farce that people like Melania Trump have to care about

Christmas decorations? And so, look, I don't agree with her on Christmas. She apparently hates it. I don't know if she started the war on Christmas or if she's just a soldier in the war on Christmas. I love Christmas. With one exception, the tree of horrors that we saw in that video. What was that?

Like, okay, one Christmas tree I love, we got our Christmas tree. Over the weekend, nobody in the house is religious. But we love the American tradition of Christmas, right, having nothing to do with religion. But look, what is that thing, man? I'm waiting for it to jump out of between one of those trees. It's a bit much, right? Well, I think Trump just needs a change of scenery, Jank. I mean, he's getting tired of hiding in a bunker.

Now he wants to hide in a forest full of Christmas trees. And Melania provided that for him. There's an excellent chance that you would see Trump jump out of one of those trees. And for a minute, you might confuse him for the Lorax. But no, he actually is against the trees. So orange either way, though. All right, just a fun little story. But really, for any new administration, and the Bidens will definitely go along with this nonsense.

But please, the media, it's the year 2020. Don't put these really insipid, ridiculous gender assumptions on the First Lady. And all the mythology, all of it. Like, oh my God, they care so much about Christmas. They care so much. And then you find the leak takes they hate Christmas. Like, why are you guys all pretending and helping with some weirdo, antiquated marketing? Why don't you report the truth for a change?

Yeah. Well, we like to report the truth. So we now switch gears from a fun story to a super serious story involving foreign policy. some pretty big updates on tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran. So Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated over the weekend in what was originally reported as an ambush-style attack over the Thanksgiving weekend. Now, there have been some conflicting reports on how this scientist was assassinated, but what we do know for a fact was that he was targeted, he was murdered, and it was brutal.

He didn't survive. And there were, you know, politicians both in the United States and in the government of Israel who certainly wanted to target him because they believed that he was the top scientist behind developing Iran's nuclear program. Now, I want to be clear and state this caveat from the very beginning. Iran has consistently denied that they've been developing nuclear weapons. The Iran nuclear deal, which was signed by Barack Obama, European countries and Iran had certain safeguards in place to ensure that Iran was not enriching uranium and was not developing nuclear weapons. Donald Trump pulled out of that nuclear deal, which essentially opened the path, paved the way for Iran to continue enriching uranium. However, even though they're doing that, they still stand by their previous statements that they are not enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. So that's context that's important to know some background. Now let's get to what happened over the weekend. So the nuclear scientist that I'm referring to, Mosen Fakrizade, was or has been considered the driving force behind Iran's nuclear weapons program for two decades. Gunmen waited along the road and attacked him as his car was driving through the countryside town of Abzard in the Demavand region, according to official Iranian media and state television. The state media account said that he had been gravely wounded in the attack and that doctors tried to save him in the hospital but could not.

Now again, I want to reiterate that there are some conflicting reports as to how this attack happened. Originally, there were reports of a bomb. Then there were reports of gunmen, possibly as many as 12 assassins armed with assault weapons who were able to escape the scene. The Fars News Agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, reported that no attackers were present and that the perpetrators instead used a remote-controlled machine gun. Iran's English language press TV added that a weapon with an Israeli logo was located at the scene. So now we get to the point where there's some speculation as to who the perpetrators are. However, you know, while the Israeli government is so far denying that they orchestrated

this assassination, the Israeli government has assassinated other scientists in Iran previously. And you know, Iran is saying that they're finding weapons with Israeli logos on it. So I'll give you more evidence as to why there's a lot of speculation regarding Israel's involvement here. Now, one American official who spoke to the New York Times, along with two other intelligence officials said that Israel was behind the attack on the scientist. It was unclear how much the United States may have known about the operation in advance. But as we know, the United States and Israel are two close allies that have long shared intelligence regarding Iran. The White House and the CIA have declined to comment on this story.

And I do want to go to a journalist who covers this topic, who I personally trust. She's an Iranian journalist, Iranian American journalist, I should say, Nagar Mortezavi, who has been on the Young Turks before. But she spoke to democracy now about some of the motivations behind this assassination. And she shares some of her analysis as well. Let's take a quick look at what she has to say. This is not the first nuclear scientist in Iran being assassinated. Israel has always denied involvement, but it's really the only country with both the motivation

and the capability to conduct such attacks. Most of the fact that there was a top person in the nuclear and defense infrastructure of Iran. He was well guarded. The country knew that he was a target, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, had named him two years ago in a presentation. He said, remember this name, Mohsen Fakhuzza. So the security services knew that he would be a potential target for the Israelis. He was well guarded.

And the fact that this operation was successfully launched, it was first said that there was an ambush. Now there's talks of an automatic weapon. We're still not sure how exactly it unfolded, but it was successful. And he's dead now. It's just a blow to Iran's security. system. And it's also, I believe it's a political move to first try to provoke Iran into a violent retaliation and basically pull Iran into a wider military conflict with the United States. And then

also complicate future negotiations between Tehran and Washington when President-elect Biden enters office, which I think this will complicate those future negotiations. So, Jenks, she's absolutely right. Immediately after this incident happened, it was reported that Iran Barry's slain nuclear scientists, leaders vow revenge, and no negotiations with the West. And as we know, Biden had committed to renegotiating the Iran nuclear deal, and this definitely does complicate the matter, and Iran is much less likely to want to negotiate with the United States, considering what its ally allegedly did here.

all right so first of all let's put some context to some of the claims by the governments so when Iran says it was very likely Israel who did it and then Israel was I don't know maybe I don't know that means it's Israel okay so do I know it definitively of course not that's why we couched in all these terms of allegations etc but if Israel didn't do something. They're not shy about it. They'll tell you. And Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists before. About a decade ago, they assassinated a couple of them, including one in front of their kids' school. They drove up and murdered him right in front of his kids. And so those are acts of terrorism. There's no question about it. And now even some of the former top intelligence

officials in America say it's acts of terrorism. And then of course, if Iran retaliates, they'll pretend to be shocked and chagrined. They'll pretend it was the first thing that ever happened in this conflict. And they'll say, you see these barbaric Muslims. You see how barbaric they are. They're going to go right killing people like this. They're terrorists, terrorists, right? Now, the reality is if terrorism has any meaning at all,

and as is likely, Netanyahu ordered this assassination, that makes Netanyahu a terrorist. Now that's by definition. So if you want to cry about that definition, that's up to you guys. If you want to say, I don't care about the definition, this guy is clearly a civilian. And you say, well, I think he's unofficially working with the government. I hear you on that. He probably is.

He's got an SUV. He's got bodyguards. Well, you know, he's a physicist with that. So I'm not saying he wasn't working on whatever version of a nuclear program they have for nuclear energy or eventually maybe one day nuclear weapons. But guys, if we say, okay, that's not terrorism, then Iran gets to say, all right, then I'm going to go around murdering American scientists and I'm going to go around murdering Israeli scientists, and that's not terrorism either. Then you can't turn around in principle and say, no, when you do the same exact thing,

by the way, in retaliation to our original act, the same exact thing as we did, we're going to call you a dirty, terrible, horrible, barbaric terrorists. But we, of course, are beloved and cherished. When we murder you, it's with great intent. No, that doesn't make any sense at all. You either have the definition of terrorism or you don't. And so if- Right.

Sorry, Jank, I wanted to comment on that because you're absolutely right. I mean, just to make it personal so people understand just how serious this really is. He was a civilian, right? Imagine if Iran decided to assassinate the top scientists working at Raytheon, right? Oh, we'd lose it. We'd invade them. Of course, terrorism. Of course, exactly.

Of course. So, guys, anyone, any right winger, or if there's, there are some unreal conservative Democrats, there's a lot of them, unfortunately, thinks, oh, yeah, that's so cool to murder their scientists. That's not terrorism, because we did it, and we're the good guys. good guys assassinate people in front of their kids. That's such a good guy thing to do. And so if you think that, and then they kill our guys, I guess, I don't know.

I guess the right wingers, they don't care about principles. We keep trying to talk to them about logic and facts and principles. And I got to get used to the fact that they just don't talk the same language as we do. They don't have the same brain as we do. They think murdering them is a great idea. If they ever retaliate, they think it's the most monstrous thing they've ever seen. Why? Well, they're Muslim, so they're terrible guys. Whereas we're the Judea Christian heritage. So when we murder people, it's such a wonderful benighted thing. And God loves us for it.

So, yeah, if you're a conservative, you're that kind of hypocrite. I'm never going to be able to convince you anyway. But in terms of our government, look, this gets issue number two. Trump, a couple of weeks ago, was considering bombing Iran. He got talked out of it. Even by crazed neocons like Mike Pompeo, they were like, ah, that's a really bad idea. All of our generals are like, that's a bad idea. That's going to start a war. And I know you want to screw over Biden, but that war is going to kill a lot of Americans. And we're not prepared.

There's a right way to start illegal wars like we did in Iraq, and a wrong way. And blundering into one is not a good idea. So Israel comes along, it appears, based on the reporting, and goes, how about we started for you? And then you fight it for us. And then Trump apparently goes, great, wonderful. Okay, you guys start a war. You guys do terrorism. We don't mind at all.

And then afterwards we'll try to create such a giant mess that a lot of American boys and girls will go over there and get killed, cleaning up your mess. So that's a great idea. Remember, Trump is anti-war, anti-war. Hilarious, hilarious. No, as long as there's only one guiding principle of Trump, and that's Trump. So on his way out, he thinks it's a great idea to start an endless conflict in the Middle East by constantly murdering Iranian officials or sanctioning their murder so that they'll retaliate and then he'll go, aha, ha, ha, I ruined another good deal. This way they'll develop more nuclear energy since he destroyed that deal, which had gotten all the uranium out of Iran. Iran has now gone back to stockpiling uranium. Why? Because we broke the deal.

So now they're saying, okay, well then I'm going to develop uranium. And so we'll become the terrorists and we'll start murdering your civilians. Okay, that's not the country I signed up for. America's got to be way, way better than this. And I don't know why another country, I don't care who it is, if it's the UAE in this case, who also hates Israel, Saudi Arabia who, I'm sorry, the UAE loves Israel. Their leadership at least does. UAE, which hates Iran, Saudi Arabia, which hates Iran or Israel, which hates Iran.

If any of those right-wing governments, and by the way, it's not all the people, It's not the countries, it's their right-wing leaders who want to start that war. I don't know who Trump is taking orders from, but none of them, none of them are Americans, and we shouldn't be taking orders from any foreign government, especially when they say, oh, by the way, we're going to commit an act of terrorism, and then you're going to be held partially responsible. No deal, no deal. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I do want to give some credit to the various groups of people, individuals as well, who have condemned this attack. So the international community

is absolutely against what happened, including the European Union, the United Nations. They've all condemned this. But former CIA director John Brennan also condemned this assassination, writing the following. This was a criminal act and highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation and a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage and to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits, I do not know whether a foreign government authorized or carried out the murder of the scientist, Fakhrizade, such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law and encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against

foreign officials. So this was certainly a reckless act. And for the Israeli government to argue that that they engage in these types of aggressive actions in order to protect their own national security, understand that Israel did not want any negotiations in the Iran nuclear deal. They did not want Obama to make that deal with Iran. And they were very celebratory once Donald Trump ripped up that nuclear deal, which again paved the way for Iran to continue, you know, enriching uranium. And Israel argues, well, you know, it didn't do enough when it came to missiles. Yeah, but it's the Iran nuclear deal. It's about nuclear power, right? What everyone in the international

community that considers themselves allies with Israel and the United States claim they're concerned about. If you want to negotiate a different deal regarding missiles, then negotiate another deal. But ripping up the Iran nuclear deal has only destabilized this situation. It has only escalated tensions. And Donald Trump, by the way, has also increased tensions with Iran Right before this assassination happened, he decided to go after the international community for continuing to do any trade with Iran during COVID, because remember, he ripped up the Iran nuclear deal and then implemented sanctions and then beefed up those sanctions further. So while China continues to do some trade with Iran, the Trump administration is threatening

to retaliate against China for doing so, right? But China responded with, but Iran was following the nuclear deal. It was the United States who decided to rip it up and not follow through with their promises. They're the ones who reneged. So why should we punish Iran for that? And I think that, you know, if you want to have the moral high ground, China in this case does have the moral high ground. Let me say one last thing here. Look, two last things.

First, I got no love for the Iranian government. I think that the Grand Ayatollah is a farce. I think that they should go to an actual democracy. And so I can't stand their fundamentalist version of Islam and the way that they oppress their own people. I don't believe them either when they say things like it was an automatic machine gun. Yeah, that's convenient. You probably let 12 assassins get outside, get out of your country with not one of them even being injured. You look like idiots.

So then you go, oh, no, yeah, it was automatic machine gun. Yeah, yeah, that's why. We didn't let anybody escape. No, we're really brilliant. So I don't believe them either, right? But when we go assassinate their scientists, do you think that that hurts the religious government in Iran or do you think that helps them? You schmucks, it helps them. It helps them stay in power because now they've got a boogeyman that they fight against.

In this case, it's real. And they say, now Iranians all rally because here is a civilian scientist, one of the most educated, one of the smartest guys in Iran, and they murdered it right in front of your eyes. Now you've got to all rally around the flag. And so the right wing, it's not that, look, Trump's an idiot, but Nanyahu isn't. You think Nanyahu doesn't know that? He knows that. But he thinks, good. That way will be entrenched in more, more bloody, bloody wars.

And that way, I'll have more power. And by the way, you know who's most affected by this and who should be most concerned right now? Israeli scientists. He just endangered all of their lives. Who's Iran most likely to strike back at? Israeli scientists. Do you think they're going to be able to get to the top nuclear physicists in Israel? My guess is no.

So they'll kill a couple of random scientists for no reason. Why? Well, to be fair to them, not for no reason, because their scientist was killed. So those poor guys who get killed, they didn't have anything to do with this. Netanyahu offered them up as a sacrifice so that he can get more wars and maybe just maybe hold on to power. Because he's supposed to leave in a power sharing deal that they have. But he's thinking, maybe if I start a bloody war that gets more Israelis killed, they'll have to rally around the flag.

The Iranians will rally around the flag. Their government that hates us and hates our citizens will be more entrenched. Yes, because that means we'll have more war and my bloody hands will get to stay in charge. That's Netanyahu's play. We should have nothing to do with it. So if they strike back against Israel, I don't care if it was Canada, UK, or any other ally. Why? Why would you say, hey, that's your problem, man.

you went did a act of terrorism. Your stupid right-wing government did. You should remove them from office immediately as we just removed our right-wing government. And so don't do the terrorism in the first place. So I'm only telling you that, not because I wouldn't be broken up about it. I just told you those poor people who were going to die because of this. It wasn't their fault at all. And I hope to God that no one dies.

But likely they will, because that's what happens when you start conflicts like this. But at the end of the day, if they say, hey, you know what? No, Iran struck back against Israel. Now, America, you have to go and fight our war. America, you have to send your sons and your daughters to go die on behalf of Netanyahu who committed this act of terrorism to start the war in the first place. No deal, no deal. We're not going.

We're not going. You want to do acts of terrorism? You back it up. All right, a reminder of why near a Tandon is an absolutely disastrous choice to serve in Biden's cabinet when we come back from the break. 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-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school.

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training, or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFTA. are in your podcast app today, and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. All right, we're back. We're back for our live online audience. Jake's going to read some

member comments and some live reads. So go ahead, Jank. Yeah, guys, we're doing something different today. So for all of our 24-hour platforms, they're gone already. They're listening to commercials, but if you're watching this year on YouTube, Twitch, or the other platforms that allow for this. So we decided we're going to take the four minutes. We're going to play around with it. So like, don't get mad at us if tomorrow we don't do the four minutes in each break, right? But we're going to try to read some of your comments. And this is the way part is much more informal because normally I get to absorb all your comments before I read them back to you. Here, it'll go a little bit quicker than that. And so I, anyway, in fact, I don't,

know how I'm going to read all these. But Brett, if we, and I'll talk to our producer and I will too, Brett, every once in a while during these breaks. So Brett, can you, I don't know if you've got the thermometer ready, but if you do, let's put that up for tyt.com slash go, because this is last day in November. And so we were trying to get to 200,000, 146-595. Can we at least get to 150? That would be amazing, guys. If you could help it anyway, that would be great. 50.com slash go. Finn Fan 33 wrote on Super Chat. I want that B-Best ornament. Yeah, I forgot to note that. That's a great point. I mean, they have a B-Best ornament on the Christmas tree. Trump is the biggest bully in social media. I mean, it's absurd. It's absurd. Luke Murphy writes in on

Super Chat. You guys inspire me to run and win in my city council race, trying to be hashtag too strong at the local level. I love that, Luke. Way to run. Way to get. getting a fight and way to win. That's amazing. So now let me read some new subs on Twitch. Tails 420 gifted 10 subs, so Tails, thank you so much. Tremu Batiki

did five months at Tier 3, so that's awesome. Thank you. Not my baby. Did two months, one with or did it with Prime. If you have Amazon Prime on Twitch, it's free for you guys to subscribe to us, but we get the revenue anyway. It's a great deal for everyone involved, so please try that. Why not Octavus, four months, Tier 1, Monique, three gifted subs, Luke H5 months with Prime,

Zazil, six months, Tier 1, AOC 202X, seven months Tier 2. Awesome, Thunder Voice, seven months, Tier 1, who gives an F about Christmas they wrote in. I happen to like the holiday, but I hear you on the pomp and circumstance, which I covered earlier obviously Angie Pepper says got three months with Prime and says love TYT gone in Paradise

did five months with Prime and said been watching since current TV love you guys current TV was back in 2012 2013 so bless

your heart you've been with us for a long long time so now the member's section as I read this as quickly as I can yeah

Jenk flexing tricep says, imagine if Hillary had one in 2016, would they ask Bill Clinton to put up the Christmas decorations? That's exactly right. It's so, so absurd. Okay, interesting. Antifa Hamburgler says, you guys are being overly woke. It's not insulting. It's just a tradition. As a woman decorating the White House for Christmas with unlimited funds would be a dream come true. But if she doesn't want to do it, let's. someone else. And last one is... Yeah, but the point is, you guys, the point is, just please understand, the point is that it's expected of the first lady. That's what makes it insulting, right? If she did it on her

own, then that's different. All right, we need to come back to the main show. All right, back on a young turks, Jay and Anna with you guys. So a couple of shoutouts to our sponsors. PureVPN is having a deal. It's 88% off a five-year plan. So you've got to protect your computer.

Try t-y-t.com slash pure VPN. And one more here. Samsung has a new app. Obviously, you can take it anywhere you want. So Samsung TV has all these. different channels, including the Young Turks as a 24 hour channel. Some of you might be watching it right now. So these are exclusively on Samsung Galaxy devices. It's free TV. There's no strings attached. You could download it at t.com slash Samsung TV. And by the way, TYT is on channel

1032. 1032. All right, Anna, what's next? All right. Well, Joe Biden is likely to name Nira Tandon as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, which is terrifying if you know anything about Nira Tandon and how hostile she is toward progressives and any member, left member of the Democratic Party. Now, one of the things that we should really be looking out for is her views on austerity. And back in 2010, when the Obama administration certainly was open to cutting funding to entitlement programs, Neera Tandon was part of that push to do so. So Neeratandon is the president of the Center for American Progress.

It is a think tank. And one thing that everyone needs to be abundantly clear on is that most think tanks, and I know I'm speaking generally here, but I think that you'll find out that I'm telling the truth, and there's evidence to this if you look at funding, Most think tanks serve as laundromats in order to launder political corruption. They're very much part and parcel of the legalized bribery system that we have set up in the United States. And that's certainly true when it comes to Neuritandin's views on foreign policy and on austerity.

So let's start off with Social Security and Austerity. Biden, who has repeatedly pushed for Social Security cuts throughout his career, announced his selection of Center for American Progress. President Nira Tandon as his choice to run the powerful White House office of management and budget. A long time aid to Hillary Clinton, Tandon touted her think tank's 2010 proposal to reduce Social Security benefits in 2012 as Biden was pushing for such cuts in the Obama administration. In fact, Neera Tannen felt pretty comfortable going on C-SPAN to explain why she thinks this is a great idea, cutting funding to Social Security. Watch. There's a viewer here wants you to take us deeper into entitlements by Twitter.

Ms. Tandon, do you know what the president means when he says entitlements are on the table? Any specifics and anything you would endorse? Yeah, I mean, so there are a range of entitlements that, you know, I think when we're talking about entitlements, we're talking about Medicare, so security, Medicaid. These are programs that people receive support because of the status that they have. So when after 65, you get funding from Social Security and Medicare. Actually, it's growing, it's getting older for Social Security. But, you know, the President has $300 billion in his budget in cuts in Medicare. That comes on top of cuts in Medicare from the Affordable Care Act.

So he has put specific cuts in the budget already in Medicare, and they had savings in Medicaid in the past. I think the question really is, if we're going to have a deal to address long-term deficit reduction, we need to put both entitlements on the table as well as taxes. It's unfair to ask only middle-class Americans to bear the burden of our deficits. Middle-class Americans actually didn't create the deficits. So I think the challenge is that we should have entitlements on the entitlements, and the Center for American Progress has put forward ideas on proposals to reform the beneficiary structure of Social Security, some of our progressive allies aren't so aren't as excited about

that as we are. But we've put those ideas on the table. But we only, we think that those are legitimate ideas that need to be put part of a proposal where everyone's at the table. So again, let me just remind everyone, this is back in 2010 when there is this incoming or at this point they're already in Republican Congress and they're very much pretending to be concerned about deficits. And so they're putting themselves in this position of allegedly being deficit hawks. I think it's abundantly clear now that they've never been deficit hawks. They have no problem with overspending, especially during Republican administrations. You know, look at how much spending is happening under the Trump administration in addition to tax cuts. And so what Niro Tannen was

saying there was, no, no, we should raise taxes, sure, but really we need to also consider cutting funding to these entitlements like Social Security. And, Jank, if I may, I just want to quickly explain how the Center for American Progress proposed to do that. This is according to the Daily poster, David Serota's publication, and Walter Bragman writes the following. Tandon's Social Security push followed the 2010 midterms during the deficit reduction negotiations between the Obama administration and the new GOP Congress, Republicans drew a hard line, but Obama sought a middle ground. Of course he did. Central to the administration's efforts, which were led by Biden, was a plan called the chained CPI that would have slowed

the rate at which social security benefits increase over time. In a report on social security solvency, the Center for American Progress, again, this is Neuritan's think tank, released two years earlier, the organization cautioned that Social Security is showing its age and warn that progressive ideas like lifting the payroll tax without addressing other problems in Social Security's benefit design would be a mistake. One of the solutions it proposed was the chained CPI. Chink. Okay. So I had some tweets about this that I, folks want me to clarify, and I'm happy to do that. So let me get you. context first. So in that 2012 clip that we just showed you, if your blood is boiling over

Social Security and Medicare proposed cuts by Democrats, number one, it should be. Number two, you have to understand that back in 2012, that was considered the most normal thing in the world. And that is why we had a progressive rebellion in the first place, because we're sick of it. But at the time, the mainstream media would tell you, oh, no, cutting Social Security on behalf of Republicans is a great idea, a wonderful, wonderful idea by Democrats. So Neera Tannen didn't think she was saying anything controversial there. So now, does it make it right? No, I just explained to you.

That's why we started the rebellion in the first place because we're sick of these corporate Democrats. So that gets a point number two. I propose something else on Twitter that I would want to mention here as well. that the Biden team should, and Democrats overall, should say to the Republicans, we're not going to have any conversation about cutting any social programs until we reverse all of every penny

of the Trump tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, right? Every penny, every penny, right? And so people on Twitter, people that are on the left on Twitter, some of them got mad at that. They're like, what do you mean cutting social programs if we do that?

We should never cut social programs. I agree with you, brother. But here's what a lot of folks are not getting. It includes establishment Democrats, includes apparently people on the left and most especially the media. We have giant, enormous nuclear-sized disagreements within the Democratic Party. So there's no way in the world Joe Biden is going to reverse Trump's tax cuts. Some people who say, oh, we reverse Trump and Bush's tax cuts.

Joe Biden is the guy who made the Bush tax cuts permanent. That was a deal with Mitch McConnell, where the rich got to keep 82% of the tax cuts forever and ever and ever. Biden himself specifically did that deal. Michael Bennett wrote a whole book about that deal. That was Biden who gave away the farm to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. He's not going to undo his own work. That's fantasy line. It's never going to happen.

And in terms of the Trump tax cuts for corporations, people like Biden say, Oh, no, no, we got to bring some of that back. It used to be 35%. The idea was we're going to lower it to 21, which is already outrageous, but we're going to take away the loopholes. Well, they didn't take away any of the loopholes. They lowered the 21. Now Biden and a lot of Democrats are like, maybe we rise it back up to 25 or 30.

No, raise it to 35 where it was. But Biden won't do none of that, none of that. And meanwhile, the left thinks, oh, okay, we've got Che Guevara in here, and he's going to undo all the Trump and Bush tax cuts. will prepare to be massively, massively disappointed. And so will the Biden administration likely propose cutting social programs before they undo most of the tax cuts, let alone all the tax cuts? Definitely, it would be shocking if they didn't.

So now it comes near a tangent into this equation. The OMB is very, very important. Wait, Jank. Yeah. Before you jump in, sorry to interrupt you, but I have to respond to some of it. I think that your characterization of what the left wants is a mischaracterization. I think that you're going to an extreme and simply, by the way, putting that on the table, like, I'm surprised that that's a negotiation you would be interested in, right?

Simply rolling back the Trump-era tax cuts and agreeing to cut these programs puts us in a far worse position than we were in. I'm not agreeing to cut those programs, Anna. No, no, no, please. I guess I'm not doing a good job of communicating here, ironic, okay, I don't want to cut those programs. We should definitely, definitely, definitely not cut those programs. The reason I point that out in a rhetorical way is so that the very slow people in the mainstream media go, oh, well, okay, that's a request that seems to be at least halfway of the road. and if Biden team can't even come half. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways

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So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Way down the road, then the Biden team is being unreasonable. If you just go in there and say, I want all the Bush and Trump tax goes reverse, the media is going to go, ah, now, these guys are crazy.

We're done with them. Okay, so, you know, how much Social Security and Medicare do you want to cut? Because it's perfectly reasonable to cut that. I'm trying to break through to the media that is constantly framing things wrong. So when the left goes, no, nope, nope, okay, we're going to ask for the moon in the sky. Okay, but guys, are we going to actually try to get something done? Are we going to try to make sure that Biden at least tries to roll back some of those tax cuts? Because if you don't create realistic pressure, you'll get zero results, zero.

And if you say, hey, I don't care about results, it's unrealistic anyway. Let's just go nuclear on day one. Okay, it's actually not an unreasonable strategy, given my sense of what the Biden team will do. But what I want to do is first let them take the first shots. Okay, then we could respond. But if you say, no, I don't care about the media, I don't care about anything. But we lost in 2020 because we didn't care about the media. We thought, oh, we don't need the media.

Well, it turns out the media came in and lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, on behalf of moderate Democrats. So they won. So we've got to fight in a way that makes any degree of sense. So that gets to my tweet. So when Nira was appointed here, and I don't know her personally, we've just yelled at each other on Twitter in the past. And you guys interviewed her for a split second.

I forget if I ever interviewed her. Anyway, near Tannen, as I wrote, has been waiting for this appointment for four unending years now. My point there is she was so desperate to get an appointment with the Hillary Clinton administration and did everything she could to help them in the 2016 primaries. So now she must be elated. I got into the Biden team anyway. Then I say all of her hard work inside the establishment paid off. And now she's in a power position to help.

help direct the world's largest resources. Now we're going to find out who she is, and so is she, rooting for her. Now, when I said rooting for her, people lost their mind. They're like, oh, my God, you love near attendant. I knew it. You're a sellout show. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, let me try to stay patient, okay?

Guys, she, what you guys apparently don't understand is people inside the establishment, they tell themselves pretty little lies every single day. They get up in the morning, they look at themselves in the mirror, and they go, no, I know I'm doing these compromises and I know that I've got all these donors at cap and including big pharma, like they're so solicitous of APEC and the list goes on and on and Goldman Sachs.

But I'm doing that all so I can get power and when I get power, that's when I'm going to do the right things and it's all going to pay off. I know those guys. I know them like the back of my hand. That's what they believe in their very, very core. So what I'm doing is I'm challenging her. Okay, now you have the power.

Are you actually going to do anything good or are you going to continue supporting Goldman Sachs and APEC and all these guys that and big pharma? And then if you do continue supporting that, then stop telling yourself pretty little lies. It just means you've always worked for corporate America and you did it for status and privilege and it's super sad. Yeah, that's what she did. That's what she did. And it's not just about austerity. It also applies to her foreign policy positions. You know, think tanks are funded by the very same donors that fund our politicians and corrupt them. And so she actually thought it would be a good idea after the United States bombed Libya to demand that Libya

hand over its oil profits to the United States for doing them this great service of bombing them and destabilizing their country. She's a disaster. And I'm sure we're going to have more opportunities to talk about her in depth as the Biden administration begins its work. But anyway, we do have to take a break right now. We will be right back. All right, guys. We're back for Twitch and YouTube and whoever else. On day one of trying to do this new system where we read you guys comments and names of folks who signed up, et cetera, already there's an issue.

I can't read any of these until I read them to you. Okay, so I guess I'll read this one because I had read it before. H.C. says totally random, Jank, I saw your live this past weekend. And you mocking Trump saying he won is damn near the funniest thing I've ever seen. This is what independent media looks like CNN could never. Yeah, of course, CNN would never. I mean, like Anderson Cooper went 1% of the way towards mocking Trump once about the some joke about a turtle that was turned upside down or something. He came on and apologized the next day.

I was dripping Trump and maggot tears into my too strong. coffee in a live. That's what he's referring to. Thank you for using super chat. Let me do the easy one here, which is reading out names of Twitch subs. Silver Zen five months tier one. Trophy writes, woohoo, no commercials, love you, TYT, and subbed for six months. Thank you. Jack Beck, laughing cackle, Al Carnegie, Sun C-64, Ron Edelmeyer, Geriatric 59, that's funny. Tiger Lily, all subbed with Prime. It's free for you guys if you have Amazon Prime on Twitch and we get the revenue. It's awesome. And Cdubs, 1984 says, I feel so special. So thank you to everybody on Twitch and to folks on Twitter as well. I'm sorry, on YouTube using Super Chat as well.

Yeah, Eric 199 has a good comment here. This is from Super Chat. The political schism in America has destroyed my relationship with my father and mother, the damage will be long-lasting, if not permanent, just don't know how we can coexist with them. Well, so that's an iceberg that America has not at all reconciled with. And it's because, again, folks in the mainstream media think that this is all temporary. And that once, and Joe Biden thinks that, Democratic leadership thinks that, they're like, Once January 20th comes around and Trump's not in office anymore, all this will magically go away. No, it will not go away.

Only 3% of Republican voters think that Joe Biden won the election fair and square. No, and they genuinely believe, you go on any social media, they genuinely believe that Trump is going to do a ta-da, and have some magic evidence, and he's going to win at the end. And so when he doesn't win, which he hasn't, nor will he, they're going to be flabbergasted. They're not going to understand what happened. It's already happened. They still won't agree to it. So they live in a totally different reality. So is your mom and your dad?

That breaks me up. But how are you supposed to talk to them? Like, I've told you a hundred times I got an uncle who voted for Trump. How do you talk to a person who doesn't understand facts anymore? literally don't have the language to communicate with half the country anymore. And, and, you know, the media and the Democrats are whistling past the graveyard here. No, no, these folks are gone, man. They're in zombie world.

They're in total zombie world. So they think they're going to, oh, yeah, we're going to drink your tears on January 20th when you see Trump won. All right. Fuji 0.01 said message received, keep up the good fight. Thank you so much. All right. We're going to come right back here, guys. All right. So one programming note for you guys, back on the Young Turks. We're going to do a special on December 8th called Unlock the Volt.

it is to talk about t yt.com slash go but it's also the show old clips and that sounds dangerous so come here for that at 8th at 8th 30 p.m. Eastern on December 8th and if you can any help at t yt.com slash go is super appreciated. All right Anna what's next? All right well in the post game today we're going to talk a little bit about Donald Trump's interview with Maria Bart Taromo but for now let's also discuss some of the con conservatives who are upset about donating money to Trump's nonsense legal battles. So a Trump donor who provided millions, literally millions of dollars to the Trump campaign for the purpose of fighting alleged voter fraud, claims that have been unfounded, now wants his money back.

He realizes that he's the one who's been dealing with fraud on behalf of the Trump campaign and realizes he's been duped. So Frederick Eschleman is the business business. man in question here. He's a businessman from North Carolina. And he said he gave $2.5 million to True the vote, which is a pro-Trump election ethics group in Texas that promised to file lawsuits in seven swing states as part of its push to, quote, investigate, litigate, and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election. But then all of a sudden, true the vote actually dropped all of its legal actions. And, uh, discontinued its validate the vote 2020 campaign. And so of course, naturally if you've donated

$2.5 million to this organization and they drop all of these actions that they were allegedly engaged in, you'd want to know why. You'd want to know what the money is being used for. And it turns out that they just kind of stopped returning Eshelman's calls. So the founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC, so yes, he's a venture capitalist, said he asked regularly and repeatedly for updates, the lawsuit asserts, but his requests were consistently met with vague responses, platitudes, and empty promises. Eschelman, the former chief executive of a pharmaceutical company, claims in his lawsuit that the nonprofit offered to refund him $1 million if he would drop his plan to sue the group. He is seeking the return of the full $2.5 million that he says he

wired to this organization. And so he started off with wiring $2 million and then later he sent another $500,000 on November 13th. Now keep in mind that the Trump campaign has literally lost or withdrew from 38 different court actions because they have absolutely no evidence of voter fraud. They're unable to prove that there's widespread voter fraud. They're unable to basically make a case that really resonates with any of these judges. And so in a statement, the organization finally responded and said this. I love this quote.

Our mission is much bigger than just one election. It is about repairing the system for all future elections. Basically, go F yourself. Thanks for the money, bro. Yeah, no, I love it. I'm here for this story. I'm glad they robbed them blind. Anyone who sends any money, let alone $2.5 million, to a group that has pro-Trump

and ethics in the same sentence deserves to be robbed. Ethics. You voted for Trump ethics? You funded Trump ethics? You got Trump ethics. Congratulations. You got what you paid for. The whole point of Trump is that he's a con man who's here to rob you. So

another group decided, we'll follow our role model. We'll set up camp and our aim will be to rob idiot suckers who think that Trump is the ethical one and we're all on the right wing, the ethical ones. We're the ethical ones.

And so yes, oh, it's terrible voter fraud. Ooh, we got our lawyers working around the clock. They're working on all the leads. So yeah, yeah, sure, sure, that's going to happen. And by the way, why did they drop the lawsuits? I don't know. I don't know if their intention was to never file lawsuits and just rob idiot Republican donors. More power to them if they did.

I don't care if they're right-wingers. It's just there's no honor among thieves, right? And number two, yeah, go ahead. I do have some details on that, jank, because soon after the story broke, the organization claimed that they did file lawsuits. They filed lawsuits in four different states, but later dropped those lawsuits, which again, still doesn't explain what happened to the $2.5 million, right? Really, they spent $2.5 million on those four insanely short lawsuits, which they immediately dropped. I mean, it's just, it's so obvious that there's, that this guy got conned, that the American people, the Republican Party, Republican voters, 68% of them think that Donald Trump had the election stolen from them, stolen from Donald Trump, I should say. And they've been conned.

It's just, you know, they've probably given, you know, small dollar donations to the Trump campaign thinking that it's going to these legal battles. But it's not. It's going toward paying off Donald Trump's debts, which is stated in the fine print in the emails that the Trump campaign is sending out to its supporters and donors. Yeah, I don't know. We might have to hire a reporter to cover this trial because it's going to be such great conservative tears all around. So the point I was making is, Anna, if this group is running an actual con, they would file those lawsuits so they can go to court and go, hey, we tried. But it turns out there was no evidence that Trump had actually won the election. There was no evidence of fraud. And Trump himself lost, and his allies, his other allies, have lost 38 cases in a row. So obviously we were right that there was no evidence.

And we were right to withdraw those. So I get to keep all the money. So it might have been part of this scam in the first place. But maybe it's not a scam. Maybe they actually did go to court and they were like, oh, this isn't going to work. We don't have any evidence. Okay, let's just drop the lawsuits and keep the money. Either way, it's a bunch of idiots in a circle of some sort

working each other's chains, if you will, and going, oh yeah, Trump, oh yeah, Trump won, man. Yeah, we don't need no sticking evidence. Trump want, here to take my millions. Oh, no, give me my millions back. Oh, I didn't know that we're all idiots. Well, come to find out you are an idiot. And so we're all thrilled that they took that $2.5 million from you.

Yeah, exactly. The post game today is going to be bonkers. It's going to be bananas. You guys are going to love it. So yes, we are going to play some sound from Trump's interview with Maria Bartaromo on Fox business. Absolutely lunacy there. But I'm bearing the lead. The top story of the day, the GOP, blaming Charlie Kirk for what? Mmm, delicious. It's my favorite story. You guys are going to love it. You don't want to miss it. Become a member at t.com slash join. Yeah, on YouTube, so easy. Hit the join button below on Twitch. If you have Amazon Prime, it's free, but we do get the revenue. So, all right, guys, and please don't forget, t.com, slash go. This is the last day of the month. If you could help, that would be amazing. Then we'll only have one month left of the fundraising drive.

And that Charlie Kirk story is the best thing you're ever going to see. So hit the join button below on YouTube, t.com slash join everywhere else. Love you guys. We'll see you there in a minute or two. young Turks, support our work, listen 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, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.