The Young Turks - The Young Turks - October 28, 2020

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Trump continues attacking Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and encouraging the violence against her. 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. Welcome to TYT. I'm your host Anna Kasparian with John Idarola, because it must be hump day. It must be Wednesday. Which means we're gonna do a bunch of stories and you're gonna love it. You're gonna love it, you're gonna love it. I don't think that's a real song. I think you're making that up right now.

Totally making it up on the spot for you guys. Oh my God. You see how far I'll go for our audience? I love you guys. We love you guys so much that we're gonna spend an entire day doing an election special just for you. And I wanna say that I'm looking forward to it but I'm sure that day is gonna be out of control. I'm looking forward to sharing the coverage with you guys, and we will be live starting with damage report early in the morning. So our coverage begins at 1 p.m. Eastern time, if you're on the East Coast, of course, but 10 a.m. Pacific time.

John will kick it off with the damage report. And then after that, we're going to have a full day of election coverage. All of our rowdy friends will join us. Adrian Lawrence, Nando Villa, Benjamin Dixon, so many people will be- Francesca Furentini. So many people that we love working with and love sharing our perspectives on this show with. So definitely check us out on Election Day. Only six days left, guys. So I'm both excited and also terrified considering what Trump has been doing and laying the groundwork to attempt to steal this election.

But you're going to walk you through all of that. We're going to walk through it together. And then some fun news programming-wise, game night's happening. TYT Game Night, Thursday night, on our Twitch channel. And you know what? I used to say it, but no one believed me. I am an underground gamer. So Thursday. Thursday, October 29th on our Twitch channel.

It will include myself, John Ida Rola, Brett Ehrlich, and Jordan Yule, who I'm super excited to play games with. So definitely check that out. Twitch.tv slash TYT is where you can watch us engage in game night. All right, well. Engage fun now. All right, well, we have tons of news to get to, so why don't we get started? And we begin with the American right wing. Well, even after Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer was targeted by right wing gang members who were plotting to kidnap her and possibly murder her,

Donald Trump has decided to continue leaning into ridiculous accusations against her, essentially egging on and inciting, the violence toward Governor Whitmer. Now, the most recent case happened during one of his rallies, this time in Michigan, of course. And here's what Donald Trump had to say about Whitmer. Your governor's a disaster. They've got to open up this state. And she's got to keep her husband away from sailing and fishing. The only one that's free in your state is her husband. I don't really understand where the weird jab at the husband comes from. And based on what we're watching, which is a rally packed to the brim of Trump supporters,

seems like the state's pretty open. But nonetheless, he loves egging on the violence and the threats. And unfortunately, Gretchen Whitmer has had to deal with many of them since Donald Trump decided to attack her for her decisions on how to try, at least, to contain the virus. in her own state. He also said this, Trump brought up his anger with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, telling a campaign rally crowd that the kidnapping plot that targeted her maybe wasn't a problem and coaxing his supporters into a chant of lock her up.

Take a look at that. It's a choice between a Trump boom or a Biden lockdown, but you're already locked down. I mean, this state, we gotta get her going. I don't know. We got to get her going. I don't think she likes me too much. So as I've said before, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, he is a type of person who isn't really a creative thinker, he is a one-trick pony, he loves to lean back to the same ridiculous, disgusting

strategies he utilized back in 2016. He realized that trying to go after Biden with allegations of criminality didn't stick. So he needs to choose a woman, someone who's a little easier to pin alleged wrongdoings onto. And all Gretchen Whitmer has tried to do is keep her constituents safe, keep the people of Michigan safe at a time when the federal government has stopped even trying to contain the virus, stop doing anything to protect people, to encourage people to socially distance, to wear masks. She has tried to handle it the way an adult who wants to be a leader would handle it, whereas Donald Trump has decided, oh, no, I want to downplay this publicly, even though I'm acknowledging how serious this virus is, how serious this pandemic

is privately, because I don't want to panic the stock markets. Well, stock markets aren't doing so well either, which we'll get to later in the show. But John, I wanted to get your thoughts. Yeah, so really fast. She made the, he made the reference to her husband, and you said you didn't know what that was. That is because you're not afflicted by Fox Brain. Fox Brain is when you believe that the crazy things Laura Ingram screams at you every night are things that everybody knows about. And it leads you to do crazy things. Like I'm really into Star Trek Voyager, but I try not to slip super inside references to Star Trek Voyager into random conversations with random people because most people don't have Voyager brain. But he makes references to things

like her husband. Do you know what that is? Sorry to interrupt you. I do sometimes do that. It's a problem. Absolutely. But half the battle is acknowledging that you have Voyager Brain. So there was this thing where he wanted to use his boat for something. That's it. Maybe there's more to it. I don't know, I don't delve that far into Fox, but he's heard it talked about on Fox, so he thinks everybody is really incensed about this thing with her husband. I don't know. I like that part of it more than the part of encouraging the calls to finish the job that the domestic terrorist failed to finish themselves. I don't like that as much, but it is good, you know, in a week where I'm trying to remind people as much as possible about the stakes in this election,

Having the president echo the calls for the imprisonment of his political opponents is an effective way of making sure that people know that. One other thing to keep in mind that in the state of Michigan, a federal judge just basically, a federal judge just decided to strike down a rule that would ban open carry of firearms, of course, at polling locations in the state of Michigan. And so, of course, we know that we're already seeing voter intimidation take place throughout the country. Seeing armed people show up, especially armed Trump supporters, show up at these in-person polling locations is pretty terrifying. But understand, you know, if you're in Michigan, you're a voter and you come across this type of situation, don't allow them to intimidate you. That's what they want. Don't talk to them. don't acknowledge them, you have the right to vote.

And what they're trying to do here is prevent you as a voter from exercising your right to cast that ballot. And if you can, please vote early, check the election laws in your state. Don't allow Trump and his goons to win by discouraging people to exercise their right to vote. But with that said, there has been a fascinating study from the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute. And what they found in this study is that the American Republic party has moved so far away from democratic norms that they actually are now more in line with authoritarian parties like the ones that currently exist in countries like Turkey, Hungary,

Poland, and India. And so I want to read you a few pieces of data that came out of this study. It examined the extent of commitment to democratic norms that a party exhibits before an election and found that more parties across the world are involved in the demonization of political opponents, encouragement of political violence, disrespect for fundamental minority rights, and lower commitment to political pluralism. According to the study over the last 20 years, when illiberal rhetoric, and of course that means rhetoric that restricts freedoms and proposals are discussed, the Republican Party has almost always moved in a more illiberal direction throughout the years. And I mean, we're seeing the culmination of that, hopefully the culmination of that with Donald Trump. Hopefully things don't devolve further.

But the researchers said that Republicans are now more similar to autocratic ruling parties, such as the Turkish AKP, the Fids in Hungary, than to typical center right governing parties in Western democracies, such as the conservatives in the UK or the Christian Democratic Union in Germany. So, look, I tend to roll my eyes these days when people talk about the Overton window. But there's no question that the Republican Party today is very different from the Republican Party that this country had in the 1990s. We know that based on the unfortunately small group of former Republican Party. elites who have now moved away from the party, joined organizations like the Lincoln Project and are now, who might now be permanent, you know, fixtures within the Democratic Party, depending on what continues happening to the Republican Party. But I thought that this study

was pretty interesting. And I think we are seeing the consequences of that in real time, John. Yeah, we are. I think it's been developing for a long time. I think that Republican power has been vested in abusing and benefiting from the least democratic sort of baked in structures of the U.S. government. And they've used those ones that exist to get power and the ones that aren't necessarily as explicitly biased in a way that allows minority parties to maintain effective rule. Like them getting the Supreme Court isn't a necessary thing. But with the advantage that they have in the Senate and in the electoral college, they can eventually end up getting a supermajority in the Supreme Court without effectively almost ever being able to win a popular vote throughout

the course of our lives in a presidential election. And I guess we can't be too shocked by it bothers me. It bothers me that most people don't seem to acknowledge that we have this war on democracy going on. And it bothers me even more that Republican voters don't care. Like if I were to, if I were to spend all day on my show talking about the fact that the Republicans don't want more people to vote, that they're fine with voter suppression, all of that, their voters, understand where their bread is buttered. They're not going to be bothered by that. They're not going to turn against the Republican Party because the Republican Party is anti-democracy.

They want the same things those Republican politicians want. They want to stay in power and not have to actually appeal to people. They don't want to have to actually come up with policies, espouse values that are actually popular and can win national elections. They want to just get it without having to do any of that. And so far, it's working. It's working like throughout the country, hopefully 2020 can be. the beginning of it not working quite so well anymore. Yeah, I agree with you. And from our member

segment, there's our section, I should say, one of the members had an interesting comment I wanted to share with you. Thomas, the tech's engine, and you can become a member by going to t-y-t.com slash join, says, Trump doesn't want to do anything and tell states to deal with COVID on their own. Gretchen Whitmer deals with COVID on her own. Trump, how dare you? Right? Because it's, Look, it's not even about COVID. Like Donald Trump doesn't care about the economic well-being of the people in Michigan or anywhere else in the country, for that matter. Donald Trump just needs a boogeyman, you know, someone to point to during his rallies

that rile his base up. And unfortunately, Gretchen Whitmer has turned into that very figure. Apparently, it didn't work with Joe Biden as well as he would have hoped. He's tried it with Joe Biden. He's tried, you know, referring to him as a criminal without specifying what type of criminality he engaged in. But understand that Trump is just looking for a boogeyman, someone to point to, someone to demonize for his own political benefit and agenda. And we're seeing that happen right now in real time. It's just despicable that he continues doing it even after the FBI foiled this plot to murder, to kidnap and possibly

murder her. Yeah. And that's that's the that's the leader of the so-called free world. That's what we're dealing with. Look at look how like committed to being fair to the worst people of the country you are where you were like, and possibly murder. Like yeah, they weren't going to hand her back. They may not have said they're going to kill her, but they were obviously going to kill her. But you care so much about being accurate and running with the information we have that you added that caveat. I know. But you know, I have no integrity. I'm a TYT reporter with no, no integrity, according to some. But it's okay.

I will always tell you guys the truth, and you can always fact check me any day, any time. And yeah, let's move on to our next story because we have more to share with you. And this is my favorite story of the day, because every once in a while we need some inspiration, someone who fires us up and gives us some hope. And I really hope this woman runs for office one day. So the Kansas City cops certainly got an earful. from community members during their police commissioners board meeting. Now, we've seen some video from other commissioners board meetings,

but this video was incredible. It featured a young woman who really spoke truth to power. At one point, a community member also stood up and called for the resignation of the police chief, Rick Smith. I'll get to more details on that in just a minute. But before I do, let me show you a few clips of this young woman, I wish I knew her name. If you know her, please tell her to run for office.

Please give us some more information about her because she's incredible. But here is a community member from Kansas City, Missouri, speaking truth to power during this police commissioner's board meeting. I'm not nice and I don't seek to be respectable. I'm not asking y'all for anything because y'all can't and won't be both my savior and my oppressor. I don't want reform. I want to turn this building into luxury, low-cost housing. These will make some really nice apartments to me.

Firstly, stop using black children as photo opportunities because they're cute now, but in 10 years, they're black male suspect in red shirt and khaki shorts. Eating cookies and drinking milk with children does not absolve you of your complicity in their oppression and denigration, Rick Smith. Because Kansas City will spend more on place, police than education and then try to encourage children to feast with their oppressors.

Y'all are really weird. It's asinine to be called radical or homegrown terrorists for not wanting government employees to kill citizens in any instance. So I'm not here begging anything of soulless white folks and self-preserving black folks. You get one life and you all in this room have chosen profits over people and that's pathetic. It gave me chills, gave me chills. She's absolutely incredible. And she names names. John, we have a video where she names names. Before I get to that, do you want to comment? Yeah, really fast. I had seen the beginning of it and really liked it. I encourage not only, like you said, like if you know or tell her to run for office, which she's probably going to end up doing, but also come on our show first. That'd be great. We'd love to talk to you about this. My favorite line is probably a lot of people's favorite lines. You all are really weird. Yeah. That was very good. Okay, so Michael Brooks used to say this all the time, and it's the most accurate comment on communication. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Communication that everyone understands,

and what she did there, like she spoke obviously from the heart, but she put things, she was clear, she kept it simple, and a statement like that, it speaks to people, Like it spoke to me, y'all are weird, because it is weird. They exploit, you know, young black children for their PR stunts. What she said in that video was just so accurate about how, oh, they're just, they're cute black children that you can exploit for your PR stunts now. Yeah. But how are they treated once they're adults?

And to be sure, Kansas City police have had quite a few instances of police brutality in the last year alone. alone. I'll highlight one of the more recent examples for you guys in just a minute. But before I do that, we got to watch more. So let's take a look at the next video where she does name names. Nathan, the gentleman in the vomit colored men's warehouse suit in desperate need of Bosley and a haircut, a former FBI agent who exudes white privilege and is the epitome of mediocrity and who loves Trump so much that he hired his former attorney general at his firm. And it's so sweet because he spent most of this meeting looking away with his head in his hands. Or Mark, excuse me, Pastor Mark, a victorious life church on 34th in Paseo,

where the mission is to provide a place and opportunity to worship Jesus Christ and preach a message of hope and faith through God's Holy Word in the building. Meanwhile, he's subjecting black people to terrorism and unchrist-like behavior at the hands of KCPD outside the building. And Kathy, Ms. I'll get here before the other commission members, so I look as if I have empathy and I'm excited to hear what they have to say. Meanwhile, I didn't have anything else to do at 8 o'clock in the morning, but be rich and white and retired, so I'm here early. Damn. Oh, I love it so much. Damn. I love it so much.

Fires me up. I want to watch her video every morning. I feel like I need it. I need it. Okay, one more video from her statement, and then I'll talk about what's been going on with Kansas City Police. And Q, had I not spent the entirety of the last six months dragging you, I would have more to say, but I don't. And Rick, I won't even begin with you because I don't care enough about you to start, but you will have to spend overtime in a chapel at the end of your life. You have blood on your hands, and while these idiots hold you on a pedestal, God does not honor injustice and murder.

Anyways, I'll leave you soulless, profit-driven, avaricious, greedy, God-forsaken humans, including anyone who works in this building, with one Bible verse from the Bible, detailing the life of Jesus, Jesus Christ, who was another unarmed black man murdered by authorities in the book you hellbound people claim to love so much. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeited soul? You're really funny. I love it I love it great and and what she communicated there so well was that police have become part of a system of protecting the inequality that we see every single day right and so in the case of Brianna Taylor it's not talked about enough that there's an issue involving gentrification the reason why the cops in Louisville Kentucky were so obsessed in doing these raids in that area

was because they were trying to clean that area, in their eyes, clean that area out because it's being gentrified. They gotta get it ready for people who are ready and willing to spend, who knows how much money on the luxury condos or apartments that are about to be built or have been built. It's what we've seen in so many major cities across the country.

What we're seeing is brutality toward people who have lived in these communities for their entire lives, for generations, and they get pushed out thanks to so-called opportunity zone projects that Donald Trump helped fund, which end up being nothing more than giant tax shelters for real estate developers and more of Donald Trump's goons and friends. But I give you that broader picture, because what she's articulating there is so real, and it's felt by so many people. And what gets utilized over and over again to push people out of their communities is this

heavy policing, is this, you know, excessive force and brutality? That is what happened to Brianna Taylor. That's what's happening to black people across the country, minorities across the country, who are again being pushed out to make room for, I want to say wealthy people, but honestly, there's a lot of foreign investment flowing into those real estate developments as well, you know, because people got to launder their money. So why not kill our own? and use police to kill our own to make enough room for foreign money to be laundered in real estate across the nation. It's disgusting. Yeah, it was awesome. I'm thrilled, obviously, to see more people engaging at every level of government like this, and also not buying

the BS coming out of the police stations, because after all of this, after eight months of protests and everything, there have been some instances where states or cities have made some sort of meaningful tiny reforms to their police. But fundamentally, the situation hasn't changed that much. And the same police department that, you know, has a tweet go viral of them throwing a football with some kids or something could be, you know, making national news for gunning down and on-armed black man. Because fundamentally, nothing has changed about their training. Nothing has changed about their fear that the consequences of their actions could result in them losing their job or going to jail. Those fundamental things are still effectively the same.

People are different, like we view the cops a little bit differently, we view the need for police reform differently, but if you were a cop in January of this year, or if you're a cop right now, I don't think that you fundamentally think about the use of force all that differently. And you won't until we actually change it. We change the training, we make sure that people who commit these sorts of murders go to jail for it the same as they would if they were any other individual. And in in far too few parts of the country, have those sorts of changes actually been instituted. Yeah. So Benjamin Crump actually has revealed the name of the young woman that we showed you videos of.

Her name is K.J. Brooks. And if you know her or if she ends up watching this video some way somehow, first of all, so much love to you. That was incredible. Please run for office. And thirdly, we'd love to give you a platform to share more. So K.J. Brooks, if you're watching this, come on the Young Turks, come on damage report. We would love to give you a platform and hear more about your story. You are incredible. Now, to her point, though, police brutality in Kansas City has been a huge problem, especially toward the black community there. In fact, just recently on September 30th, there was a pregnant black woman who was met with excessive force because the Kansas City police wanted

to clear the area and they saw her as, you know, an obstacle to that. And, you know, we're going to show you video. It's B-roll. It's difficult to watch, especially knowing that she's a pregnant woman. But they throw her onto the ground, drag her. And the cops also appear to completely lie about this incident, knowing full well they were being recorded. The cops had apparently said that she was handcuffed, turned to her side, and immediately placed in a seated position. That's what cops claimed. You watched the video and it's something completely different. The officer who arrested the woman stated he took care not to apply pressure to his to his legs. Now, because he was like holding her down with his legs. And then video

posted online, some of which we just showed you, appeared to show an officer placing his right knee on the face down woman's back, on her back for at least 16 seconds during the arrest. And that's a, that's a case where, you know, luckily there wasn't a fatality. But the woman suffered from, you know, like she had to keep going into the hospital because the pregnancy had complications following, you know, the cops like rough, like roughing her out up like that. It's just, it's just hideous. And kind of a demonstration was just talking about. Like, like how many stories of insane police brutality have we talked about months after

Biona Taylor, George Floyd, anything like that? Anything, all of those cases which have done more than literally anything else to make it a constant topic of conversation that the police are being far too quick to use lethal force and still cops go out, find themselves in situations like that and kill people or brutalize them like in the video that you just showed us. And they do it knowing that there's heightened awareness about it. They do it knowing they're on tape, they just don't seem to care because again at the end of the day, you can do all of that.

But if you still walk free, if you still maintain your career as a cop after doing it, it's not really that big of an issue, honestly. And look, you can say that I'm wrong, but I'm just judging based on. their behavior. They're still doing it. They're doing it, you're right, because you become, like, they have become emboldened by the lack of consequences that follow. And, you know, 25-year-old Deja Stallings is the woman who was roughed up by cops in that video. And they're fighting for justice, and because of KJ and the video that we showed you, you know, she's got support. And we got to do whatever we can to support

people who engage in this type of political activism and I would love again to give her a platform if she's willing to come speak to us incredible woman props to her props to everyone who's fighting the good fight gives me a lot of inspiration to keep going and I'm grateful for that

we got to take a quick break when we come back some more stories about right wing terrorism in America and how nothing's being done about it. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fitting 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 have learned 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. Hey everyone, welcome back to TYT. I'm going to read a bunch of comments from a bunch of different sections, starting with hashtag TYT live from Twitter. Derpy the Wise says, if the material needs slash quality of life does not improve for the vast majority of people soon, we're going to get a lot more authoritarian. If the people are going to get a lot more authoritative, I'm in favor of that. The math magician says, this video is fantastic, referring to the videos that we showed you. earlier of, you know, the police commissioners board meeting. She's an American hero, and I fear for her safety, keep playing this clip.

It'll make it harder for fascist cops to, yeah, to kill her in retaliation. There was other stuff in there that, you know, terrifies me. I don't even want to say it. The Randy General says, I wonder what this excellent young woman would have to say about Kamala Harris, nothing good, I bet. I mean, I would love to interview her. Like, I want to learn more about her, you know? I don't know. I think she's incredible. She's just such a fascinating person. And a strong woman. I mean, I love feeling inspired. It doesn't happen often these days. But seeing her speak truths of power like that was incredible. From the super chat section, we have Douglas Brown who says, and interesting how this wasn't read, I think this was a comment from yesterday. Jank didn't read it, but I'll read it.

Douglas Brown writes in and says, Jank, I like and respect you. But Anna was right to criticize your dumb statement that Donald Trump has no chance of winning the election. He will probably lose, hopefully in a landslide, but he has a plausible path winning Pennsylvania, which has shrunk to a four to five point margin in the polls and all toss-ups. Yeah, I know. Like, I think you're absolutely right. The thing that terrifies me is when you look at the swing states, Biden's lead is not all that great. In fact, in a lot of these swing states, if you think about the margin of error, it is a toss up. So that's why I just feel uncomfortable talking about the election with the kind of confidence that Jank has had so far. He said he has no chance. Yeah, weeks ago, and mind you, he warned me

and Brett that he was going to do this. Weeks ago, he said he was like, I'm going to call the election today. I'm calling the election today. What's it? I was like, Jank, please don't do this. That was literally my statement in response. Don't do this. But he did it anyway. I love Jank, but, you Jank is jank. He's gonna, he's gonna do those kinds of things. Ray Turner says the saddest part of the day is no more Dragon Daddy and the Vig, no more. What is dragon daddy, John? Oh, no, you have to you have to come to that understanding gradually. I can't just tell you. Okay, all right. Let's take a look at our thermometer. And by the way, real quick, before we do so, So it was Emma Viglin's last day at TYT. I'm going to get super emotional talking about it.

So I want to stop talking about it immediately. We love Emma so much. We wish her the best of luck. It was an absolute honor and pleasure to work with her. And I know we're going to continue working together in some capacity. So Emma, we love you. Best of luck. She's going to join the majority report.

Fantastic show. We love Sam Cedar as well. So just I love seeing her blossom into the career that she deserves. She's a hard worker, an incredible reporter, and- Nope, she's dead to me. She's dead to me. Get out of here. Get out of your dragon daddy, whatever that is. All right.

And then thermometer. Let's take a quick look at that. And then we've got to move on to the rest of the news. Nice. That number is becoming larger. So we have the goal of raising $200,000 and we're very close to the end of the month. But thank you to everyone who's taken the time to donate every little bit helps. TYT.com slash go is where our fundraising effort is and we're trying to keep TYT sustainable.

The fundraiser will be over when the year is over and because of you guys were able to be accountable to our audience. And that's more important to me than anything else. So thank you. Let's move on to some other news today, including an update on something we covered literally years ago. Today we learned that Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security, who actually did quit the Trump administration in protest, happens to be the person who penned that anonymous New York Times op-ed. You remember that? Well, I can refresh your memory. He revealed his identity on Medium, where he He wrote, more than two years ago, I published an anonymous opinion piece in the New York Times about Donald Trump's perilous presidency, where I was serving under him.

He responded with a short but telling tweet, treason? Make no mistake, I am a Republican, and I wanted this president to succeed. That's why I came into the administration with John Kelly, and it's why I stayed on as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. But too often in times of crisis, I saw Donald Trump prove he is a man without crime. character and his personal defects have resulted in leadership failures so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives. And as we know, around roughly 225,000 Americans have died during this pandemic. And Donald Trump seems to not care about it at all. He believes that he

has defeated the virus, even as more Americans continue to contract it. More Americans continue to die as a result of it. Now, Miles Taylor was not publicly vocal against Donald Trump when that op-ed came out, but he became publicly vocal during the pandemic when he stepped down from his position. He then, you know, made his rounds criticizing Trump vociferously and also took part in ads like the one you're about to watch that was produced by the Republican voters against Donald Trump. He was one of the most unfocused and unfocused and disciplined senior executives I've ever encountered. I came away, completely convinced based on first-hand experience that the president was

ill-equipped and wouldn't become equipped to do his job effectively. People who are still serving in this administration have said to me, just wait until the second term. It'll be no holds barred. Hungry now. Now? What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are.

Grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger with its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. I'll be shocking on. We'll do what we want. Now in his medium post, he also wrote, Trump has been exactly what we conservatives always said government should not be expensive, waste. arbitrary, unpredictable, and prone to abuses of power. If given four more years, he will push the limits of his power further than the high crimes and misdemeanors for which he was already impeached. So look, I, of course, I'm sure, disagree with him on pretty much every political issue. He does

identify as a Republican, and that point doesn't escape me. But at the same time, in this political climate, I do give him credit for stepping down and revealing his identity and criticizing Trump openly on a regular basis. That's not an easy thing to do, especially when Trump is constantly directing violence toward people he considers his political opponents. Yeah, I don't know. This is the guy from like a month ago that was appearing on the news and revealing stuff about him being stupid stuff, right? This is the same individual. Miles Taylor? Yeah, and we now find out that he's the guy from 22, I believe it was, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I honestly, ever since this news broke, I haven't really been sure how to

respond to it. There was someone on Twitter who pointed out that anonymity of sources, whether in op-eds or sources for stories, is important for many reasons that I'm sure people watching this understand, and we need to continually remind people like Donald Trump and Sean Hannity of why that exists. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used in a sort of negative way. And I feel like that anonymous op-ed was the example of that, where it was used to make it seem as if it was Pence or if it was, you know, the chief of staff or whoever. And instead it was this guy. Who was working and he was in meetings and that's fine. But now we find out, yeah, he's like a lot of the people that worked for Trump and got disillusioned or whatever.

It's fine that he revealed some of this to us, I guess. I'm not going to applaud him too much, though, considering when he went to work for Trump, we knew a lot about who Trump was and what his policies are going to be like. You can't just go in and then, oh my God, you know what, this guy's pretty bad. And I don't think he's that hard of a worker and he's not that intellectually curious. Wait, did you wake up the day of inauguration? I don't know. The whole thing just seems so weird to me.

No, I get it. I know that regular Republicans were in a tough spot. Sort of. But like we now can go back and we can find out this guy, Miles Taylor. Some of the stuff he was involved with at DHS is really bad. Oh, for sure. That's why I, that's an accurate point. It's a devastating point. You're absolutely right about that. I mean, how long did it take for him? He stepped down from the Department of Homeland Security a few months ago. You know, it's not like he did it as DHS was involved in taking children away from their parents at the border.

I'm not, I'm not giving him brownie points. What I am saying, though, is that what was frustrate me is like the anonymous op-ed, if you go back and watch how we covered it at the time, the nature of it being anonymous irritated me because it's like, I don't, I don't, why don't you come out? Why don't you, first of all, step down, right? And I felt like the op-ed was written in a way to make it appear as though, like, I'm actually not stepping down because I'm trying to control the situation. from the inside.

I mean, and now we see who he is, and it's like, really? Were you? Were you? Did you really think that was going to happen? But I do, to some extent, and it's a small amount of credit, but it's still some credit for eventually coming out, stepping down from his position, and speaking out against Donald Trump. I guess, I guess.

And look, part of the frustration is that it wasn't more effective, really, but I admit that it couldn't really be more effective. Like, so he's, he's a person who has come out and is telling us, oh, Trump's awful. Do you know how many people have worked for Trump and have now come out that he's awful? Like super high profile people, cabinet members and things like that are like, no, no, he's legit one of the stupidest people I've ever met in my life or, you know, saying he's saying racist things and massage it. But none of it really, what's that? He was fine with all of that.

Yeah, yeah, no, but I'm saying like from the perspective of it actually hurting Trump, Hypothetically, if you, back in the 90s, if Miles Taylor had come out against, you know, Bill Clinton or something, it would have been this big scandal. But we've had a bunch of those. Didn't seem to matter at all. In hindsight, the whole anonymous op-ed thing, did that matter at all? I don't know. I don't know if it mattered at all. But my frustration about that has less to do with Miles Taylor and more to do with the political climate that we're currently in.

Because when you think about the big whistleblower cases or scandals within the Obama administration, I mean, I immediately think of Edward Snowden, and Edwards, like, that was a huge story. Edward Snowden still can't come back to the United States. He's still considered for prosecution for treason. It's like the most ridiculous thing. Donald Trump's DOJ is currently aggressively trying to extradite Julian Assange into the United States so then they can place him in solitary confinement and torture him the same way they did with Chelsea Manning.

And so there are risks associated with coming out as a whistleblower, especially against this administration, and that's where that small bit of credit does come from. Because we still have military generals who worked for Donald Trump, who still refuse to publicly criticize him. Like, they'll give you hints here or there. They step down from the administration. But I don't hear John Kelly aggressively going after Donald Trump, you know, he's still under this, like, assumption that there needs to be decorum, that you need to follow certain

traditions. No, we're dealing with someone who's trying to single-handedly dismantle our democratic process. Yeah. And so all hands on deck. It doesn't mean that there are allies, doesn't mean that we're friends, but it does mean that there's one issue, one incredibly important issue, which is preserving what's left of our democracy, that we should fight together in, you know, doing. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right, though. It is frustrating. It is frustrating to see how like whistleblowing doesn't matter at all, as if it's whistleblowing against Donald Trump. Yeah.

What I also find interesting is when members of the media who cared so much about protecting whistleblowers and claimed they still care so much about protecting whistleblowers, we're like fired up about this very issue during Obama's administration, but now all of a sudden whistleblowers don't matter. The only whistleblowers who mattered were the ones who came out during Obama's administration, not Trump's. Like, you either want to support whistleblowers or you don't. You want to protect them or you don't.

And you can't have it your way depending on who the whistleblowing is against, who the whistleblower is speaking out against. For whom the whistle blows. For whom the whistle blows. That's a better way of putting it, John. My memoir. I mean never. All right, we do have to take a break, unfortunately. But when we come back, we have more for you, including Donald Trump funneling money, taxpayer money into his own businesses.

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Among us. We're going to play among us. Do you know what among us is? Yes, it's the game that AOC played and it was fantastic. It was, it was. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a good time. All right, well, let's do some more news before we end the first hour.

Donald Trump loves funneling taxpayer money to his own. taxpayer money to his own businesses, even though he promised to do the opposite. Now on one hand, he makes a big show of donating his presidential salary, but in reality, he has funneled millions of dollars in taxpayer money into his own properties and his own businesses. Let me give you some examples. The Washington Post looked through financial documents, which they had to file a FOIA request for, and they found that since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers and from political supporters into his own businesses.

In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, and that's according to documents and publicly available records. So since 2017, Trump's company has charged taxpayers for hotel rooms, ballrooms, cottages, rental houses, golf carts, votive candles, floating candles. I don't know what the difference is. Candelabras, moving furniture moving, resort fees, decorative palm trees, strip steak, chocolate cake, breakfast buffets, $88 bottles of wine, and $1,000 worth of liquor for White House AIDS. And all of this is happening while Americans are not receiving the financial help they need

during a pandemic. So while our government is nickel and diming us, Donald Trump is taking up all this taxpayer money and sucking it into his own personal businesses. So Trump's campaign and fundraising committee paid $5.6 million to his companies since his inauguration in January of 2017. Those payments, turning campaign donations into private revenue, continued even this year as Trump fell behind in polls and his campaign ran short of money. So if you're a Trump supporter and you're hate watching our show, I just want you to know that if you've donated money to Trump's campaign, he has essentially funneled that money into his businesses rather than using it toward the campaigning that he needs to invest in in order to win reelection.

And he knows he's doing it. He knows that he's lagging in the polls. But it's not a big deal because he'll, you know, mitigate all that by setting the stage to steal the election and dismantle our democracy. Congratulations in aiding and abetting that. Yeah, I apologize if what I'm about to say overlaps quite a bit with what I said before the break and with just about the only things I've said all year is, it's amazing what doesn't matter at all. What a year for investigative journalists to question why they decided to use their life the way they did because you can do all of this research, you can find amazing things that in the past would have brought down presidencies. And it's like, who cares, I guess? He stole

millions of dollars. You know, Congressman in California got in trouble for like $50,000 or $150,000 for shorts and rabbit plane tickets and stuff like that. That's right. Arguably as stupid it is this. But it doesn't matter. Like he can do it. He can just take millions of dollars and pay himself. And honestly, this is nothing in comparison to so much that he's done. And I know we're gonna talk about the massive debt that was forgiven and all of that. There's just everywhere you look there are financial crimes and the hints of crimes you could find if you put a little bit of time into it. And I guess we'll see on Tuesday if people care about any of that. Corruption has determined the outcome of total election.

before the Dems rode that like about a decade ago at this point to huge wins. And it couldn't be any more obvious than this, but his supporters have been convinced of so many insane things. They hold so many insane positions and not caring whether the guy they worship robs them blind is one of the weirdest, I think. Yeah, I've- You all are weird in the words of one of my political muses. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, this Washington Post article does a good job in high some of the more absurd events that Donald Trump hosted at his properties with foreign

leaders and then again funneled money to his own personal businesses. I just want to note that the $8.1 million figure in taxpayer money that was funneled to Donald Trump's properties is really a giant underestimate because there are still documents and financial disclosures that have not been released by government agency. So for instance, The State Department and the White House itself has declined to release many records, which would add millions more to the $8.1 million tally that was shared with you guys. But again, this is taxpayer money. While we're being nickel and dined, while Congress has failed to give us another round of stimulus,

mostly because congressional Republicans and Trump, depending on what day it is, don't believe in spending that kind of money on Americans, on ordinary Americans. Behind the scenes, he's just like, yeah, nickel and dime them. But let's go ahead and have caviar and champagne and go ahead and bill the American taxpayer for it. So let me give you some other specific examples of events he's had. So in April of 2018, for instance, Trump welcomed Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-Lago in front of a tower arrangement of roses. In the next two days, as Trump and Abe talked about trade in North Korea, Trump's Palm Beach Florida Club build the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for

food and wine, of course, and $6,000 for roses and other formal arrangements. Now, the American people can't get any financial help right now during the pandemic because, I mean, Papa Trump, He's got a, he's got a, you know, greet world leaders with $6,000 in roses and floral arrangements. Trump's club even charged for the smallest of services, writes the Washington Post. When Trump and Abe met alone with no food served, the government still got billed for what they drank. Bilateral meeting, the bill said, water, big water, $3 each. Was it ocean water? Ocean water.

By the way, the only, like, I guess silver lining to this is that when he was buying his floating candles and his chocolate cake, he must have been really disappointed when he find out what strip steak actually was. And it wasn't at all what he'd hoped. And then one other specific example, because you might remember this, John. But the most expensive and most famous was the formal dinner for 30, where Trump informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that the United States missile strikes against Syria were happening during dessert. The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen, Trump later said in an interview with Fox business. Taxpayers likely paid for that. Mara Lago also charged $7,700 for that dinner. It's so disgusting.

They're populists, man. They understand the downtrodden, silenced majority. They get it. They get it. And they talk about how much they care about those people as they eat multi-thousand-dollar meals. Yeah, Donald Trump, man of the people, completely abandoning them, allowing them to die from a pandemic and refusing to provide the stimulus they need. postgame is next you don't want to miss it t yt dot com slash join we have a ton of other stories to share with you and more we love you guys and we'll see you soon

thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jenk huger and i'll see you soon Thank you.