The Young Turks - Tick Tick Tick, Trump Associates Flipping

Episode Date: September 15, 2018

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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. Okay, go ahead, drop it. Power panel, you get it. Many things must be noted. John Iderola, Jacketless. You guys asked for what you got.

I thought Mark was going to be jacketless today. Sure, yeah. What am I going to borrow my jacket? I think with the shouts. No, no, he's been working out. He's been dying to go jacketless. Every post game, it's like, it's a little hot in here. It's a little.

What am I going to do? First of all, it's hot right now in here. It's partially because of a bushing. But it's also Friday. And I'm really out of it. I was sleeping on the floor of an office like an hour ago. I'm just out of it. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

Let me be. It's all I have to say to that. But we'll get back to that in a second. Jules. So there you go. That's easier than getting it, you know. It's fine. Mark Thompson, my name is Jake Hugar.

Some of you know that. Okay, so a number of things. First of all, let's note for the record, shopt, t.com. Okay, vote. Also shopt, t.com. And Martin Luther King over there. So I love that. shirt. I love this one. Imron Sheik, one of our viewers did this one. Thank you. I'm Ron,

super appreciated. Shop, t.com to get a fine shirt. Second of all, you know, we've been adding more and more stuff to membership, because of the membership tribe. One of the things we brought back to great acclaim is behind the scenes. So members get behind the scenes footage. Mark, we're going to have to shoot one of your poker games. Oh, I love it. I love it. Poker games, huh? Yeah. Yeah. If you want to see Mark depressed and to get In a way, I've never been depressed and ejected on this show. Anyway, yes, my life is open to you for membership. You get to see Mark wagering a pinky on a hand of poker.

One day, I mean, two, two, two, but I'm just saying, so-z-do, so-stub. It's getting worse. All right, anyways, so I mentioned that because John's done a couple of them. I've done a couple of them today. And I knew that the behind-the-scenes would eventually become like a reality show, There'd be different characters, like, who'd get mad at each other and drama and all that stuff. And it began today. But in an unexpected way, the two characters against each other are me against my cat.

So the controversies involved are, do I have cat scratch fever? And is my cat trying to kill me? Oh, wow. Okay, so that's going to be up for the members of behind the scenes. TYT.com slash join to become a member, get all the fun. Okay, and then today we got a lot of different power panels, lots of different combos people going in and out. We're going to mix it up. We got big stories for you guys, obviously.

The Kavanaugh accusations are amazing, fascinating, controversial, a lot of different people from across the political spectrum have different points of view on it. We'll talk about that a little bit later. We've got massive breaking news on Manafort, and now we have a lot more information than we did yesterday. and even Dershowitz, who is Trump's informal lawyer on TV, is going, uh-oh, uh, he did not add, tick, tick, tick, tick. But that might be coming soon as well. So we've got a lot of show ahead for you guys. So John, I always want to say shirtless, but no, thank God, not for that.

Now, he's not, he hasn't gone full, Alex Jones. We're hot blood in my face. So, Jacketless, John. Okay. You know, I have a piece of paper in my hand with some good news that I was going to start the show off with, but now you guys have been sort of annoying me. Maybe you don't need the good news. Oh, see, well, okay.

Maybe you don't need this poll from Florida. Wait, wait, wait, right, all right. That's okay, man. Yeah, yeah, maybe. John, you don't need a jacket. I mean, look, man. Never look better. You look fantastic.

Give me the poll. I was going to, okay. Okay. Okay, so Florida poll, Gillum versus DeSantis, is Russ Muson, which, as, you know, As we know, tends to lean more towards the Republicans. That's right, that's right. So I'm just curious because we've been doing a lot of predictions lately. Well, what do you think it is?

So if you're saying that it's a good poll that we would like, and it's from Rasmussen, which doesn't lean Republican, it's massively Republican. And what I mean by that is not just the people who run it or commissioned a Republican. It has historically overpolled in the direction of Republicans when compared to the actual results in the elections. So giving you that big long setup, if Rasmus has got Gillum up by five, he might be up by nine. So I'm going to say five. Gillam up by five, the Democrat. Gillum, 48%. DeSantis, 42%. Oh, okay. So that's likely Florida voters. Also note that voters who say they are certain

to vote, Gillum leads by five. No. Republican. party. That southern strategy. Tick, tick, tick, tick. So DeSantis came out in the first half he won and Gillum won and said, we don't want to monkey this up. It was not a dog whistle, it was a human whistle, we all heard it. And it was the most brazen, obvious way of injecting monkey into a sentence I have ever seen. So, and his thesis was, it's, you would imagine, I can imagine, hey, I'm gonna get my racist voters to vote against Andrew Gillum and there's more racist in Florida than minorities and that's my strategy. To which we now say based on their polling, you mean the Republican polling through

Rasmussen, oops, I told you on day one, I thought that was a wrong political calculation. The reality is no, the demographics have changed even in the south, even in places like North Carolina and Georgia and Florida. though Trump won those places, the reality is voter turnout was the key difference. So conservatives got riled up and showed up to vote. Democratic vote was depressed, partly because, or mostly because the candidate was Hillary Clinton. So what you don't want to do if you're a Republican is rile up Democratic voters to show up. And that's exactly what DeSantis did.

And I think he's gonna pay the price for it. And it looks like he already is. Okay, you want to go to, I mean, I don't know if you want to get the soundboard, ready. Do we have the soundboard? We know on the soundboard, do we? No, not on power panels. Okay. That makes sense.

Okay. Former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, became the latest in an ever-growing string of Trump employees and aides and friends and people in his orbit to plead guilty to federal charges today. And also the latest to enter into a cooperation agreement with the special counsel. He fled guilty to one county of conspiracy against the U.S. and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice due to attempts to tamper with witnesses. It's weird that he pled guilty of that second one, because I keep hearing that conspiracy

to obstruct justice isn't a real thing. We shouldn't actually worry about it. So that's a couple of extra charges. Of course, in the first trial that he'd already gone through less than a month ago, I believe there were nine charges that he was found guilty of then. So we've passed 10 now, and this is by his own admission. As a result of that, he will not face five additional charges that he would have faced if his second trial, which had been planned to begin in the next couple of weeks,

would have gone through. Thanks to this deal, that will not happen. But in addition, prosecutor Andrew Weissman told the judge that Manafort's plea agreement with Mueller's team is a cooperation agreement, and other charges will be dropped. The scope of the cooperation was not immediately clear. We've learned a little bit since then, but not a ton, really. We do have a video of Trump's attorney as of today, which will roll now. Tough day for Mr. Matter for this accepted responsibility.

And we wanted to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life. This is accepted responsibility and this is for conduct that dates back many years. And everybody should remember that. So there's two interesting things that you might have noted in there. The last part is, this conduct that dates back many years. And as we all know, crimes don't matter if they were before. It's always to be looking forward, not looking back. But the other thing is, I don't know if you notice, but he said he wants his family to stay safe.

Yes. What is that about? He knows what he's doing by dropping something like that. These guys wrap themselves in family all the time, family in the flag or whatever. And what's odd to me about Manafort is his daughter has come out. Remember, she's come out and called him a monster and she was really quite vocal about the fact that she thought he was guilty and she thought the way he did business was sleazy. She's been so outspoken about it.

They're just an odd thing. So when he said family, that's right where my wife went. See, that's super interesting because we all had a slightly different take on that. I thought he was saying, like, now that I'm cooperating with Mueller and partly against the Russians, I'd like to make sure that my family's safe. So there's that too. I mean, that's also a possibility. But let's get to the heart of the issue.

Now that Manafort has pled guilty, countdown to Donald Trump saying, you know, flipping should be illegal. It ought to be like we should think about making it illegal. Flipping, there's another word for it, cooperating with law enforcement. That is literally what Trump said earlier. He thinks that perhaps cooperating with law enforcement should be illegal. G.I. What do we say he's on? Cops or robbers?

We actually, we have a little bit of that comment. We know the full thing, but here is a little bit of Donald. Trump talking about what he knows about flipping. One of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial. You know, they make up stories. People make up stories, this whole thing about flipping, they call it. I know all about flipping. Are you considering pardoning Paul Manafort?

I have great respect for what he's done in terms of what he's gone through. That's the thing. Now that he's cooperating, the question is could he potentially pardon him? He could potentially pardon him. I saw something in a Vox article. It was a sentence, I actually tweeted out it was, pardoning is now off the table because the president would never do something that would be seen as so brazenly self-serving. And I thought, if somebody just woke up, they found themselves in the Trump presidency.

It's like that meme of a guy waking up from a coma and the nurse says, you know, he's like, did I miss anything? Well, Trump is president. Well, there's no way he'd pardon, you know, himself in a criminal investigation and all of his associates. Yeah. Yeah. So in the longer version of that clip, he talks about flipping maybe should be illegal.

He's known people that have had people flip against them for the last 30, 40 years, which again makes you go, hmm, who are the people you know? How many mafia bosses do you know that this was an issue for? But look, we don't have the soundboard today, but yes, one more time, down goes Manafort, Down goes Manafort. But the most important part, and the question we asked yesterday is, to what degrees he cooperating with prosecutors, is this a plea deal just saying, okay, you guys got me, I'm not going to go through trial, I'm going to save a million dollars, because he's already

spent a million dollars in legal defense, and he would probably have to spend another million to go through a second trial, and just, okay, throw the book at me, but not quite as much because I'm playing to a deal, or no, I'm going to give you everything I got, okay? And it appears for now, and I'll tell you the marker that you'll be able to tell for yourself which way it's going in just a little bit. But it appears for now that he is fully cooperating with prosecutors. So, tick, tick, tick. And so as, now the reason I'm going to quote Dershowitz here, who I have no respect for

at all, is because he has been going around pretending to be Donald Trump's lawyer on on TV, even though Trump never hired him. It's like brazenly begging for a job. It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen. But he is in full tilt defense of Donald Trump, and he is today. But even Dershowitz went on TV and said, there is no half cooperation. No, the prosecutors only give you a deal if there is full cooperation. And here's an important part.

Once you begin talking, there is no undoing that talk, because you've already given the evidence that the prosecutors want. So if the pardon's going to come, it's got to come right now because he's in mid-song, right? And so if it doesn't come right now, and then the prosecutors come out and say, we have gotten good cooperation for Manafort, that means that Trump is likely screwed. Now that Trump is okay if he, well, not okay, he's going to have other issues, but if he goes, pardon right now, right now, pardon, no, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine, pardon, pardon,

What do you mean, right? He's got to do that, or the evidence comes out and the prosecutors have it, and they could use it later, even if there is a pardon. And then secondarily, if prosecutors come out and say, this was not full cooperation, and the judges has told him, you have to come back and tell me, did he fully cooperate or did he not fully cooperate? And accordingly, we will sentence him, okay? So if prosecutors come out and go not full cooperation, that means he did not flip on

Trump, and he'll get a little less of a sentence for not going through the trial. If they came out, come out and say full cooperation, that means he flipped. Yeah, and the weird thing also to hear Trump kind of try to continue to message as he does, where these facts are made up, and you know what they'll do, they'll make stuff up on you. You know, this trial, as it was prosecuted by a Manafort, I mean, I don't mean it, literally, I'm talking about as he put together his defense, it's not like 1,800 attorney is in there, defending this guy. He's got tremendous resources. And so when he sees that there's no light at the end of this tunnel and that he has to make this chain, he's not seeing a bunch of stuff

that's made up and can be knocked down in a court of law. Because as I say, he has some of the best legal minds that he can put together working on that team. He sees there's a real facts that are going to be as damning as can be. And he'll never see the light of day from prison. So that's why he has to take the deal. Yeah, Gates flipped on him, his longtime associate. And it's not a light thing to plead guilty to these terrible charges, now 10 in total, including conspiracy against the U.S. And I'm curious to see if Trump's going to double down on flipping should be illegal because if he says you should not cooperate with law enforcement as they unearth a conspiracy against the United States of America. I mean, that's a hell of a moment. And we've had a lot

of those moments, but that might top them all. That's a great point, though. It's not just money laundering in tax evasion. And I think you're right to, because I think I was focused on the money laundering tax evasion. And I, in the lights, I may have lost that specific charge. You're absolutely right. This is a, it's very serious. And his toxicity is now, it seems most definitely going to leak out onto Trump. Yeah. And it's difficult to know exactly what he would have when it comes to, you know, Trump's lawyers cooperating, especially long time lawyers, it makes a little bit more like Cohen, like has been with him for a long time, involved in a lot of deals. But in terms of Paul Manafort, one area that he probably would know quite a bit about

is the meeting in Trump Tower. He probably would know when Trump knew about it, you know, how involved was he in setting it up and communicating afterward, and all of that. So we could potentially find out more about that. So there's a couple of possibilities. Trump Tower is, of course, at the top of the list, because he was in that meeting. And there's, we already know that there was a number of lies that Donald Trump Jr. and Donald Trump told about that that is now a public record.

They first said it was about adoption. Then they said, yeah, sorry, we're just kidding, it wasn't about adoption. It was about the Russian oligarchs trying to get out of sanctions in return for dirt on Hillary Clinton. Then they said they didn't get any dirt. Now is that true or not true? Then Donald Trump said, oh, I didn't write the statement saying that it was just about adoption. Now they had to admit, yes, Donald Trump did dictate this statement that lied about what the meeting was about. So it reaches the president.

And then there was talk of whether Donald Trump was made a way. aware of the meeting, which would then link him to the collusion. So those are all the things that's stake in the Trump Tower. I think there's another larger issue, but go ahead, John. Well, that one thing that you said is what they have said, that we didn't get any dirt, which could end up being just a clever way to message around that. They didn't need to get the dirt. They didn't release the dirt.

But the dirt was released and it's possible that the communication was about coordinating when that should happen. Because remember, those things started coming out within a couple of hours. of the National, not the National Choir, the Billy Bush tape and all of that. So certainly somebody was waiting to spring it. They might not have had any conversations. But if they did, it didn't necessarily have to involve them getting the dirt. So he could be technically true, but also lying.

Oh, John, that is such a great point. I don't know why I haven't thought of that all along. Because they don't have to receive the dirt at all. The Russians released it to everyone. So in essence, the Trump team received it as well as the entire public, which was the whole point. What they could have discussed in that meeting is, if we win, we'll look out for you. You guys release what you have on Hillary Clinton now. And they did.

They released it after the Trump Tower meeting. So, and then they get to say in a lawyerly way, we did not receive that information in that meeting. So. And this is all speculation, obviously, but Paul Manafort might know. Well, that's something I totally don't understand about how the Trump campaign, you know, or Trump and his administration are talking about the meeting and the idea of collusion. is if they came out and said, we colluded with Russia to win the election, Republicans would just say, great, that stopped Hillary Clinton from being president, she's a threat to the United

States, and it's a good thing that you did. So I kind of, I still honestly don't understand why there's this, you know, like tiptoeing around language and this shifting story. I feel like they could honestly just come out and maybe, like, you know, at best I'm guessing maybe it's a calculated risk that they're not doing it. But all of this just sort of, it doesn't make a lot sense to me. No, Jules, they need a fig leaf because I think you write about the substance of it. The Republicans are like, yeah, we won, and the Russians helped us, who cares, right? That's my sense of the politics of the moment, but they need a fig leaf because it's illegal.

So you can't just come out and go, yeah, I work with a foreign country during our elections, and I took valuable information from them, which breaks all campaign finance laws. What are you going to do? Hashtag suck it? No, you can't, I mean, even Trump can't do that, right? That's why they need to pretend, well, we didn't technically get the information so that all the Republicans like Mitch McConnell can go, good enough, they didn't technically get the information.

Although I think that Trump is well within the realm of tweeting out hashtag suck it. Yeah, that is entirely possible. Hashtag haters and losers. But one other thing, look, Manafort might have information on that as we just discussed might be super, super relevant to that law breaking that the Trump campaign might have part But the other thing you could have information is about Russia's in general. And what I mean by in general is this guy is deep ties to pro-Russian forces in Ukraine and to the Russian oligarchs.

Now, if the Russian oligarchs made deals with Trump, either connected or not connected to Manafort, could Manafort know it? So, and Manafort's an expert in money laundering, that's why he's in this world of trouble. Some of us suspect that Trump did money laundering with the Russians, so could Manafort know that? Now, again, we're not sure now because we don't have the direct evidence of what Manafort knows, but the prosecutors are about to. So, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So either Trump is in a lot of trouble or it's game over.

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all of this. Sarah Hockadie Sanders says this has absolutely nothing to do with the president or is victorious 2016 presidential campaign. It is totally unrelated. Thank you, Sarah, for not mentioning how many electoral college votes he got. And then just one little interesting thing, just because Jared pointed this out to me, and it is a little bit weird. Rudy Giuliani put out a statement. Once again, an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason, the president did nothing wrong. But it's interesting, that was not the first draft of that statement. That's the second draft.

In the first draft, he said the president hasn't done anything wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth. But then they took that back, took out Paul Manafort telling the truth, and released this new one. So have fun over the weekend watching to see if he pardons Paul Manafort. But if he doesn't, he might drop a piano on Paul Manafort, at least in terms of hashtag suck it. They're so clunky and reckless.

Like that kind of, like to release a draft and then to somehow edit it and then re-werect it. release it? I mean, it's just everything this administration does. Even on policy, their stuff is clunky. I mean, from the very first weekend, they were screwing up everything to do with even sound policy, what they consider was sound policy. Yeah. And, you know, Manafort is, they're taking a bunch of his residents away, aren't they? He's losing a bunch of these very expensive homes and residences he has. And so when Trump refers to the cost of the prosecutor, the special Council, actually, not prosecutor, but special counsel, Mueller, these acquisitions by the federal government, just taking the Manafort properties, pays for that entire investigation.

So Manafort is, it's only the beginning of this Manafort thing. And what Jenk points to, I think, you know, he could just be the pinata, you know, of criminal acts that this Trump organization is part of. That's going to flow out when Mueller hits it. So last couple of things here, you guys are absolutely right about. the Giuliani statement, Giuliani, he says, now Manafort's going to tell the truth and that will show you that Trump didn't do it. He goes and talks to Trump, he's like, yeah, take that back.

Think about that, think about that, right? Take the truth part out. Yeah, no, let's take that part out, okay? And then finally to just give you a sense of why I said the thing earlier by Game Over and what the range of options were, earlier the range of options are, and I said this on air because I wasn't sure at all, that Manafort might have done illegal things having nothing to with Trump. So if they had nothing to do with Trump, he'd have no evidence on Trump.

That option is almost eliminated because prosecutors accepted the deal. They would not accept a deal if Manafort's got nothing on no one else. So that's hanging on by, I read, 1% 5% chance that Manafort comes in and goes, okay, okay, I mean, it was just me and I'm super bad guy, you didn't know how bad I was, now I'll tell you how bad I am but not connect to anyone. They're like, wow, that's so bad. Okay, fine, I'll give you a plea deal. But that is very unlikely. Again, even Dershwin says very unlikely. So that option is almost eliminated. That only leaves you two options. One is he at least knows about Trump Tower, in which case Trump's in a lot of trouble if that Trump knew about it and the deal

was go ahead and release the Hillary Clinton emails in exchange for God knows what. And that's an important, very, very important part. By the way, receiving valuable information, information that is of value is against campaign finance laws from a foreign government. It's illegal and a huge problem for Trump. Maybe he survives that, as Jules said, in a political fight in an impeachment issue. But if they promise something in return, whether it's technically treason or not, the politics of that is, hey, I will give you something that the Russian government wants at the cost of the United States government and citizens, you don't win that political battle.

So if Manafort has that information on what the Russians wanted back, oh boy, that's good night, Irene, too. And then there's the money laundering, and that's a bigger if. If he knows stuff about Trump's money laundering, that's absolute game over. So that's your range, and it ain't a good range for Donald Trump. So one more time, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Well, last point on Manafort is he seems almost inevitably to have sold access in some way. I mean, that's been his history, right? He's an influence peddler.

And so when you see this guy, Paul Manafort, you know he's worked with the Ukrainians, the Russians, and the Americans in different ways as a political consultant as a lobbyist after being a political consultant. So it seems almost clear that on some level. he's selling access to get out of his own financial jam. So I think that whole idea of pay to play is going to be a big part of the future. In the next couple of months, I think we're going to find out a lot. All right, sounds good.

All right, so we have to take our first break here. By the way, if you like this analysis, t.yt.com slash join, support it, support independent media, and get all our shows. So when we come back, we've got more of that analysis for you guys. So it's on the issue of Medicaid and what the Republicans are doing to it and doing to their own voters. But there's a twist that no one else is talking about. It's the role of big business in that and how they're doubly screwing you over. So it's really interesting. Definitely won't get it anywhere else.

We'll do that when we're ready. All right, back on a young churks. Tick, tick, tick, tick, no, I'm just kidding. Okay. All right. So let's do a couple of comments. comments, and then the story, of course, Route 273 writes in in the member's comments. Good afternoon, Rebel Alliance, just that, but I like the sound of it.

Jane Locke writes in, have been a member since 2006. Wow, Jane, who won the first. We started, I think, the membership at the end of 05. Wow. There's an argument to me made that we invented the freemium model. So anyway, that's an industry thing, but Jane, since to 06, you're the best. And look at the second half of the sentence. And this is the best website design TYT's ever had awesome job Turks.

So I, you know what, what am I gonna do? I guess I'll take the credit. Seriously, what does HTML stand for? Yeah, hot. Hello there. I'm Tamale. I know, I was thinking of Tamale. All right, no, seriously guys, great credit to our product and engineering team.

They did a wonderful, wonderful job on it, so thank you. And then to Twitter, A.M. Smith, 41582 says, too many letters, too many numbers, by the way, in your handle. Are they going to let Manafort keep the ostrich jacket? That might be what made him flip. Right. I just said. Did you say that? Yeah.

No, no, I don't think so. So, guys, if anyone gets a picture of Manafort walking around with an ostrich jacket inside his prison cell, that means we got them. That's all it took. Yeah. So now I got... That'll be photoshopped a million times, by the way. You know that. So we were doing the membership drive.

As you guys know, we started after Labor Day, and we started at $27,661. And then yesterday we passed $31,000, which was amazing. Thank you guys. I wanted to see where it is in a second hold. Hold, okay? But we're reading some of your comments about the membership drive, and it's great because it's, first of all, it's complimentary and thank you guys, we really appreciate it, but it gives us a deeper connection to you guys to hear your stories.

And then a lot of times when we're doing the show, we visualize talking to you guys. So it's pretty neat, and we want to be as connected to you guys as possible. So FISA wrote in, hashtag TYT live, first thing in the morning, check the Young Turks hoping for as much progressive wins as possible. I live in France, and as an activist, I know that politics and policies impact the world. Members since November of 2016, hashtag TYT family, hashtag walk the walk. You keep me saying too much love. Well, much love right back at you, FISA.

Thank you. Seth Gilbert wrote in, Jank, proud to sign up for a TYT membership. The network has done amazing things for progressive politics. as someone raised conservative, I change my views over time. It's great to find a home for my progressive ideology through you guys. Hashtag fight the good fight. Absolutely. That's great to find a conservative thinker who can flip.

I mean, if you're pardon the expression flip today. Should be legal. I'm thinking of making it illegal. By the way, Seth, I'm right there with you. I also flipped as you guys. No, I used to be conservative. M. Bison wrote in. Finally put my mouth, my mouth, probably meant my money.

I finally put my money where my mouth is. I'm not an official member of the home of Perk. No, that's also wrong. I'm now an official member of the Home of Progressives in the TYT Army. I'm finally a member. Let's keep the membership drive rolling. Thank you, Jankana and J.R. For all you do.

Thank you. We appreciate the last one. Jackie Kalari wrote in. I can't believe I didn't know about you sooner. I recently bought a TYT membership and T-shirt. I'm now addicted. Miss you on the weekends. I've been catching myself saying,

preposterous, of course, and doing my shimmy in my new shirt, keep up to good work. Thank you, Jackie. So a little shimmy right back at you, a little shimmy action. So, let's see where we are with the thermometer today. 31, 115, okay, can I see 31,200? All right, t.com slash join to become a member. Thank you, guys. There it is.

Home of Progressives. And when you join, that means you built that. And when we have progressive victories, you are part of that. Okay. By the way, I just, I love the app. I love the Ti-T app. It's seamless and great, and you should be proud of that also. Yeah, our product and engineering team has been fantastic.

So thank you guys. All right, let's go for it. I love seeing that number go up. I mean, it was already big, but I love seeing it go up. Because we know, and we've been seeing it, especially, you know, in the primaries last night, how big the challenge we face is, how much we're going up against, both on the right wing, but also, you know, amongst the Democratic Party as well, and the media and the donors and everything. And, you know, you get to decide how big of an army do you want on your behalf?

And you get to be a part of it, and it's very easy. And you get a lot of content as well. That's right. And you know what, including a challenge show, damage report, let's check out that podcast, all of our shows, over a dozen shows. Okay, one super last thing. You remember yesterday we could cover the crazy story of Donald Trump thinking that architects and engineers are weak? Like construction guys are strong, engineers are weak.

Okay, well you couldn't be more wrong. Our engineers are super strong. They're too strong. So you want to mess with our engineers, Donald Trump? Okay, they will design an app to come get you. And the app will mainly make this sound. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Now we've got to release an app with just a button and you're president, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Okay, how about some news? Yes. Not good news, though. This month, thousands of people in Arkansas will be the first to be thrown off of Medicaid because of new work requirements. Arkansas removed more than 4,000 people from the Medicaid rolls, with some estimates saying that number could climb to 50,000 when the requirements are fully implemented inside of one year from now.

We've got some stats on how this came about. Of those who lost coverage this month, about 95% didn't file the necessary documents with the state that led to their removal from Medicaid, though some may have been working the required 80 hours a month. So if you didn't get in the documents, it doesn't matter if you were actually abiding by the requirements, you are off and good luck getting back on. And we've got an associate director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's program for Medicaid talking about how this could have come about.

It seems that the state is doing some outreach, but a lot of individuals still don't know about the new requirements and are not setting up their accounts. So even if you need the Medicaid, and even if you're doing the work, and even if you would fill out the paperwork, does the government have much of an incentive really to let you know about that? If the driving ideology of Arkansas's government is to attempt to destroy Medicaid, certainly inside of their borders and hopefully be a part of that nationwide? Perhaps not. So maybe if you had responsible government actually trying to get the word out that people have to put in this paperwork to continue to qualify, maybe more of these people would still have

access to their Medicaid. No, if there's a hiccup at all in this entire process, they're going to default to getting you off of Medicaid. That's what the idea is. They're trying to remove names from the rolls. And so, yeah, unless all your eyes are dotted and T's are crossed, they're going to lose you in this process. They want to shake out as many people as they can. Yeah, and unfortunately, this is part of a trend that is already going to expand soon and

possibly more in the future. Indiana and New Hampshire are slated to implement their Medicaid work requirements next year. and beneficiaries in Indiana will have to work at least eight months each year, and an 80-hour a month requirement will be gradually phased in over an 18-month period. Hopefully, the thing that you need this Medicaid for is not something that stops you from working for too long, because you might find yourself with neither the job nor that. New Hampshire is going to require 100 hours a month beginning in January, and rollies

who don't meet the threshold for one month will have their coverage suspended. Okay, so there's two layers to this story. First, they did the giant tax cuts for the rich, so they need to get the money from somewhere, so they're going to get it from you, and so they're going to take it from the, in this case, you know, the poor, the middle class, et cetera, so they're going to cut your Medicaid. They're like, oh, whoa, we don't have any money. Yeah, I know, because you gave $2 trillion to the rich and tax cuts.

So second of all, it's their ideology that people who require government assistance at any point in their lives are bums. And so, oh yeah, you prove you're not a bum and show us that you work. because they only respect rich people. Donald Trump sent it at a rally. He's like, you know, I don't like poor people in my government or in my cabinet. I only want rich people because I need smart people. Ah, they can't stand you.

And then when you vote for them, they think you're the world's biggest sucker. And where does it hit first? Arkansas. Voted for Trump overwhelmingly, and he's hitting you first. Okay, now the second layer, I would argue, is even more interesting. So the Chamber of Commerce is not for reducing Medicaid. Now that's interesting. Chamber of Commerce represents big business.

They wanted the giant tax cuts. So why don't they want to get it out of the entitlements like some of the other Republicans? Because they don't want to pay for health insurance, they don't want to pay for benefits, etc. So what do they do? They pay you really low wages and then they say, go get the rest from the government. So they don't want the government cutting off Medicaid because it takes their call. cost down, but they also want to make sure that you have to go work for them at low wages. So they say, put in a work requirement.

So they must work for us and we unload our costs onto the American taxpayer. Now I'm not theorizing that, it's this story that we covered a little while earlier. When I saw that the Chamber of Commerce's position was no, support Medicaid, but make sure people have to work for it, I was like, oh, that's the game that's being played. Because remember, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters for these corrupt politicians is their donors. And the Chamber of Commerce represents the biggest donors in America. And what do they want?

They want low wages that they pay out and unload all the costs onto you. So this is exactly how they do it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is a bigger part of like the overall problem that we have with Republicans in healthcare. on a base level, Republicans are saying, if you want healthcare, go get it. It's the free market. You should, you know, if you want it, get a job that pays it. If you want it through Medicaid, you know, work 80 hours, 100 hours a week. But at the same time, they're saying insurance

company should be able to make all the profits they want. It's the free market. And those profits should come directly from people who need that money the most, who need that help the most. So when you look at it from both sides, all they're doing is continually and repeatedly targeting people who are disenfranchised, who are, you know, people who are sick. And that's who they're stealing this money from, like you said, to give it to the richest people in America who don't have enough, apparently. Yeah. I just can't help but think.

It is a crashingly ironic that it's happening in these red states in such a big way, of course. And you're going to create a population already struggling that's outright destitute at the end of all of this because the costs of health care are so crippling that it's, I mean, if you skip ahead in this film to the end, it's really grim. I mean, they're really playing with people's lives in such an ugly way. So one last quick thing about that. Later in today's show, we have another story about how a lot of the people in the middle of the country got killed by the housing crash more than the coast. The coasts recovered and are now doing well,

but the middle of the country got killed by it. At some point, this has got to catch up with the Republican Party. I know that people have voted against their own interests for decades now, but when your prices for your house is underwater and you're paying more for your mortgage than your house is worth, and you've got sky high insurance rates, and you thought it was going to get better under Obama, and you thought your housing situation was going to get better, you thought your wages were going to get better,

and they also went down when you account for inflation. And none of this stuff got fixed. Well, at a bare minimum in 2018, you're not going to be excited to go vote for them. And by 2020, you might realize you've been had, you've been took. They took everything from you, and they never gave you anything. It was all a big trick, and the tax cuts went to the rich. They didn't go to you, and your life didn't improve. You thought maybe your problems were because of Obama, come to find out, no, it's the powerful that have been robbing you the whole time.

Yeah, and it's true that the rhetoric of the middle class and helping the downtroddening, the rhetoric that we heard so much of, I mean, that I think they rallied around, that's not going to be able to cut through the next time. So a Jenks saying is so true by 2020, I don't know when it's going to happen, but they just won't be able to rally around rhetoric anymore. Their situation is going to become way too dire. In fact, it has already begun. That is why they are withdrawing their ads about the tax cuts, because they're not not

only not working, they're counterproductive. People are like, I don't see it in my check. I just don't see it. I know that there was $2 trillion with the tax cuts, but if it's not in my check, whose check is it in? Exactly. So that bill is already coming due right now. It's only going to get worse and worse for the Republicans. So I conclude with tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Well, and thankfully right now, I mean, we're coming off of, you know, a couple of years of Bernie Sanders being very out front with addressing these sorts of issues with his rhetoric, with his plans. But now you're seeing it spring up all over the place, candidates, congressional candidates, gubernatorial candidates. We're seeing it all over the place in slightly

different flavors and people are liking it more and more. And I think that the right wing, some of their attempts to counter people like Alexandria Ocasor-Cortez have been fumbling and awkward because they are trying to defend the indefensible. And they don't know how to fight back against people who are actually speaking to real economic anxiety. with a plan to actually fix it. No, my favorite segment of all time was when Fox News had that woman who attended her rally come and go, I'm afraid, I'm afraid because it sounds like they're trying to help our families.

Yeah, yeah, but perhaps you're afraid of the wrong thing. Yes. But here's what's going to happen in 2018, that's going to make a difference. Okay, blue wave, vote, go do it, shop t.com. All right, we gotta take a quick break here. When we come back, we're going to switch, we're going to play a little bit of musical chairs, but a huge story about Kavanaugh, did they get them, and was it the right thing to do? So very controversial.

In fact, I'm a little afraid to talk about it, but we're going to do it because we're the Young Turks when we return. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. All right, wait a minute, drop it. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data.

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Why mesh in a second? Perhaps there might be a third, oh, okay. So here's a couple of comments for you guys. Chris writes in on the member section. Hello there, Jake. My name is Chris from West Covina, California. Became a proud TYT member in July. It has been a tough summer for me health-wise, but I have found solace in watching the

Young Turks, and you have become an inspiration for me to pursue a career as a political analyst. All right, Chris, go get him, brother. I appreciate it. Twitter now, Sartorial Narwhal says, the rich are fully behind wealth redistribute. as long as it is redistributed to them. And then a really great comment on YouTube super chat, V writes in, is it V for victor or V for Vendetta? Anyway, writes in, unfortunately, Trump probably won't be evicted until January 20th, 2019.

In order for Pence to be, to potentially run twice, he'll still lose, though, to Bernie 2020. Now, I'd never consider that. I don't think they're going to go that deep into looking out for Mike Pence. because the situation is probably getting away from them. But it is an interesting point. If they wait till then, then Mike Pence still could run twice and be within the limit of 10 years. I think the amount Donald Trump cares about Mike Pence's political future, if Donald Trump is going down, you would need an electron tunneling microscope to find it.

No, 100%, but will the Republicans in the Senate? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, no, I think that's totally true. I just don't think he personally gives it in. And real quick note from our sponsors, NordVPN, you can save 70s. 77% today for military-grade encryption and the only VPN to receive a perfect score from PCMAG. Remember, this protects your computer and what you're looking at, so nobody can look at it. And if you use the promo code, TYT, or go to NordvPN.com slash TYT, you'll get 77% off.

So my suggestion is to do that fairly quickly. All right, what do you got, Chuck? Okay, well, what I've got is probably the biggest story of the week, and that might be underselling it. This morning, we learned what was in the contents of a mysterious letter that Dian Feinstein has apparently had in her possession for some time and was refusing up until recently to share with other Senate Democrats during the nomination process for Brett Kavanaugh. We're finding this out thanks to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, who traced the story of a woman who saw Brett Kavanaugh being nominated and wanted her story to be told. The woman who has asked not to be identified, and we don't know who it is, first approached Democratic lawmakers back in July. of this year shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early 1980s when Kavanaugh was a high school student at Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda,

Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. And although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors at the time, the woman said that the memory has been a source of ongoing distress for her and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result. In response to this

coming out, Brett Kavanaugh put out a statement saying, I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time. Wow. So yesterday we knew that this story was coming out but we did not have the details yet and now we do and at the time I said it's got to be a pretty high bar to go back to high school well that's that's they might have met that bar so the part that got to me among all the terrible parts was the cover in her mouth and turning up the music yeah yeah so so this just should be super clear this is not a joke This is not sexual harassment. This is an allegation of alleged sexual assault possibly that could have gone to the point of rape.

Yeah. So there's gradations. Some people don't like to talk about gradations, but I think they are relevant, especially in this context, meaning that if he was made inappropriate sexual jokes or comments back in high school, no way. You can't go back 35 years and hold someone to account for comments they made back in high school. But the closer you get to sexual assault, the bigger the problem is, and this obviously appears to be very, very close. Now, there's other issues. You know, how reliable is it?

There was, she says, now that's not for me questioning her. I don't see any reason why she would come forward if it wasn't true. I know now the Republicans are in a state of paranoia and conspiracy about everything. So they probably think, oh, yeah, the Democrats invented it like they did with the people who died in Puerto Rico and, et cetera. So there's no end to those conspiracies and paranoia. Sean Hannity was tweeting that out today. Yeah, of course, of course, right? But she seems to have come forward.

And in fact, the Democrats, for a long time, at least Feinstein, did not bring it to public attention. But there's another person in the room. She says it was Kavanaugh and his and another classmate. That classmate said something that was really interesting. Kavanaugh says, I deny it categorically, unequivocally. it did not happen, right? The classmates said, I quote, I have no recollection of that.

That's usually what you say when you say, if you don't have the evidence, I don't recall it. Later, if you do have the evidence, I do recall it. That is not an unequivocal denial. It's just, I'm telling you from my experience and lawyerly responses, I have no recollection usually means I did do it, but I don't think you have the evidence yet. So, but man, it's tough. So what do you guys think? Well, it is tough because there's still a lot of detail missing.

Like, we have more information about the alleged sexual assault, and it's serious, but I think it's also important, look, this is, aside from politics, like take politics out of it, just focus on the topic at hand, right? So make it seem as though this is like an apolitical situation. If it comes to anyone who's about to get a new job, an opportunity of a lifetime, I would want to make sure that those claims that have been made against that person are verified, right, in some way. And so I do think it's important for this to be investigated, to verify it, to confirm it,

and then a decision should be made. I think it makes all the sense in the world, given the seriousness of these allegations, to pause and delay this confirmation. Republicans are pushing to go forward with the vote on September 20th. And I don't think that should happen. I think that there should be an investigation because this is a, and I'm not. I'm not saying that I automatically, no, he's done, he's out, we shouldn't even consider it, I'm saying that we need to look into it further and then make a decision based on the

outcome of an investigation. But if it's confirmed, this is serious, I don't care if it was in high school, I don't care how long ago it was, he allegedly held a woman down and then tried to quiet her so no one would hear her, you know, protesting or yelling to make him stop, and then they turn the music up. I mean, if this is proven, then it's a serious allegation. But, but Anna, I think age is relevant. And so let's have that discussion. Not when it comes to this. Well, look, what if he was 12? You see what I'm saying?

Like, so my, and part of the reason I bring that up is even in legal issues after, if you were convicted as a minor, and obviously there's no conviction here, there were no charges brought at the time, You don't serve as long as an adult because they think that you don't have the quite the same. Your brain hasn't developed enough. Right, exactly. He wasn't 12 though. Yeah. No, no, but even at 17 they would not hold you to the same account as they wouldn't make them.

They would. A lot of 17 year olds face adult charges, even if they've committed the crime at 16 or 17. So for me, I think if you're in high school, your brain is developed enough to know that you can't, rape is wrong. And also, this is not just, you know, how much time will you serve or can you get any job. This is, can you get into a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful positions anywhere in the world? Specifically, when we are having a national discussion about what your presence on that court would represent for women's autonomy of their bodies.

Yes. And you apparently, if these allegations are true, have a lifetime track record of believing that women's bodies are up to you to decide what happens to them, not the women. And so we already had all of these concerns. This is not some convenience store job or something. This is a guy who wants to have the power of life and death over other people. I think we should have the highest level of scrutiny possible for that. So I just, but I want to be clear about a bunch of things here.

Number one, Anna, you don't care if he is 17, it's still wrong. Everyone agrees to that, 100%. So if the 17 year old did it now, it'd still be sexual assault and we'd have a trial if it went to the authorities, right? So the question is, you know, can you? you prove it enough, which you mentioned earlier, and are we going to hold someone to account for what they did allegedly when they were 17 now that they're 53? Is that a lifetime of, you know, not caring about women? Or is that if it's true, one terrible, terrible incident

he did at 17? And I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying by 12. He wasn't 12. I'm not saying he was 12. I'm saying that there is a line somewhere. And what we're trying to do here is have, I hope, an interesting conversation about where is the line? Yeah, I want to be clear about one other thing. There are certain people who do get the benefit of the doubt if they do commit a crime early in their lives, if they are 12 or 11, whatever it is. If they're in middle school and they commit a serious crime, there's a certain group of people who will get the benefit of the doubt, they can change, it's okay.

And then there's another group of people who will have that hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives. If they do anything, even remotely wrong, following that as an adult, you know that people will go into their backgrounds and their records and look at what they did as children, even though they were children when they did it. Those are usually people of lower socioeconomic statuses, right? Usually minorities. And so I, look, for me, it's not a question about, you know, whether he was too young

to be held accountable. I think when it comes to the Supreme Court, that's not any job, that is one of the most serious jobs, that is, yeah, one of the most serious jobs in the country. And as John perfectly mentioned, he's going to make decisions that affect the lives of every woman in the country. So I think that we should hold him to a higher standard. And I'm not saying that we automatically believe the allegations, I'm saying we should investigate it and figure out if we can get to the truth. Can I just say really fast? Obviously, we're having a discussion about what these standards should be. And you might think that what the Republicans have said in response,

and we'll get into that a little bit, that they're making clear whether standard is, but we already knew what their standard was, like a year ago with Al Franken, they made clear that if you have groped a person, you cannot be even a senator, which is not a lifetime appointment, not as powerful as the Supreme Court justice. So they are clear on the record that this sort of allegation is dismissive. You do not get to have a position like that if this is true. I can't believe I'm about to say this. But to be fair to Republicans, if Al Franken was not accused of groping someone in high school. So, again, you might think it's not relevant what his age is, but I think it's fair to have that discussion.

How do you think they would have responded if it had been in high school and Al Franken did what he did? I don't know. I don't know. I literally don't know. We know how they responded when it came to Roy Moore. Yeah. You know? That's the heartbreaking thing about this is every time we see how Republicans respond to stuff like this, whether it's like, you know, sexual assault, whether it's allegations of pedophilia, whether it's adultery, which they, you know, hold to this insane standard, it's always the same result. They all vote along party lines every time, every single one of them.

And personally, even with this coming out, I don't see any change. There's, you know, there's been how many things. There's been the perjury. There's been the, you know, allegations of money laundering or bribery. There's this, you know, sexual assault allegation. Like, does this make a difference to people who only vote on the basis that no matter what happens, the other side would be worse. Yeah, look, one more thing. In every story like this, and we've talked about it a hundred times on the show, I try to think, what if the shoe was on the other foot?

And I've got to be honest with you guys, if it was, let's say, an African-American judge that was up for the Supreme Court, and the Republicans dug up something that he did in high school, and I, man, I'd be wary. In this hypothetical, what did he do? No, shoe on the other foot. If they charge him with this. I think there's certain acts, sexual assault, a terrible assault or murder. I mean, those are the sorts of things that I think you should be able to be disqualified

from certain things for the rest of your life. Attempted rape. I mean, it's attempted rape. Like, let's stop using euphemisms, right? Like he, I don't know, based on the details we have, there's no confirmation that he actually went through with the rape, but based on what we know, it's attempted rape, allegedly attempted rape. It's serious.

This is not just, oh, he said something. Oh, the girl was asleep, so he took a, he took a degrading, photo, like pretending like he was going to grope her. It's not that. He attempted to rape her. So I think that it is a high standard. And Jake, I get it. Like, if the shoe was on the other foot, I think that it's fair to say that we would probably have some level of paranoia, that it's some sort of political stunt, right? So I don't really begrudge Republicans for feeling that way. I'm going to be honest about that. I think that we would probably feel the same way as well. At least I would. But with that said, I would still want an investigation to ensure

that, you know, these allegations are not true. That way, we don't confirm a Supreme Court justice who could really have a negative impact. Well, he's going to have a negative impact on women's lives. But I would at least want to know that he hasn't done this, that he hasn't attempted to rape someone. I think it's also worth noting that when stuff like this comes out, because this just became public, it's often not the only case. So we may see more people come forward. We may see this story develop even further than just should we investigate this one

case. Yeah. It's not over and you're absolutely right. We shouldn't, you know, the Senate shouldn't vote on September 20th. They should wait and see what this is about. And I would also mention that the way the Republicans want this to play out anytime something like this happens is begin attacking the credibility of the woman who you assumed was probably lying to begin with and look at this great family man.

Here's the thing, I don't know anything about this woman. It could turn out that she's lying, I have no reason to believe that. But I know that Brett Kavanaugh has committed perjury multiple times during these hearings already. He's done it in past hearings as well. He is an on the record perpetual liar. And so I'm inclined to believe any random person more than Brett Kavanaugh at this point. Again, it doesn't mean that the allegations are true, but it certainly merits investigation. There's no reason why we need to rush into giving someone a 30 plus year appointment on the most powerful court on the planet. Agreed. Okay. Do we want to talk about the letter? Just briefly. I know we're

we're already over. Hi. The Republicans responded to the new information about possible sexual assault, alleged sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh by releasing a letter of their own. This is a letter prepared by women speaking in support of Brett Kavanaugh. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released it with 65 women who mostly attended all girls' high schools around Georgetown Prep and have known Kavanaugh for more than three decades.

We're not going to read the entirety of the letter, but we will read the bulk of it. We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 79 and 83. For the entire time, we have known Kavanaugh. He has behaved honorably and treated women with respect. We strongly believe it is important to convey this information to the committee at this time. They went on to say that Kavanaugh has stood out for his friendship, character, and integrity. In particular, he's always treated women with decency and respect, and that many of them

have remained friends with the judge over the past 35 years. They also point out that he was a good student and a good athlete. So that's a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with whether or not he might have sexually assaulted someone. But this does always happen when these allegations come out. So I guess we can't be too surprised. That was amazingly fast. Yeah.

Right? It's amazing how quickly he found 65 women to sign on to this letter. I don't know. I just find that strange. I got to say, I graduated from high school 10 years ago. And there is no way that I could think of 65 people, period, you remember my name. Yeah, this seems totally ridiculous. So full context here, number one, it's 65 people overall over the course of 35 years, some

of whom knew him back in high school. And I think it is relevant to have women come forward and say, no, that's not our experience with him, as they did with Al Franken, but it does not prove the case at all. So you could be decent to a lot of different women, but sexually assault another one. And so in that sense, John is right, it doesn't prove that he's innocent of this. However much weight you want to give it, that's up to you, okay, that other women have had positive experience with him. To Anna's point, that's the most interesting one.

So how in the world did they find all these people in a day and a half, or maybe just even one day. Now, there's somebody on Twitter who said, I signed the letter, and I learned of it last night. Maybe it was the quickest job that they've ever done. Or, obviously, the other possibility is Kavanaugh had told them about the incident, so they knew that it might come out. That's why they went back and found women that knew them back in high school and had this letter prepared to go in case this came out. If that's the case, that makes me lean against Kavanaugh in a big, big way, because he knows he did it, and he knows it might be a huge issue. I can't, I can't stop thinking about how aggressively Mitch McConnell tried to dissuade Trump from

choosing Kavanaugh. Thank you. Oh, great story. I said it would be impossible to get him through the process because of documentation, stuff like that. So let me just jump in on that because, yeah, so there's a lot of documentation. And, like, we've seen, you know, his writings, his decisions, all of that stuff, some of which was controversial for people on the left, I guess, but nothing really out of the ordinary, nothing out of the ordinary compared to other Supreme Court nominees. So I thought it was strange. I'm like, oh, man, these documents are going to come out. We're going to find some shady stuff. No, standard conservative stuff. There wasn't anything really that stood out to me.

So I kept wondering, what was Mitch McConnell so afraid of? I feel like something's about to drop. When is it going to happen? And nothing really came out of his rulings or his decisions. But this came out. And then you have this super fast response from, you know, Republican senator, 65 people, you know, signing on to this letter about his character, about Kavanaugh's character. It all seems very strange to me.

That's all that said. Yeah, no, Anna, that is such a good point. So I think they might have screwed up here by releasing the letter in one day. I know they wanted to try to get ahead of this, like into the cycle and try to slow down, et cetera. But I hadn't thought of it the way that Anna pointed out. McConnell was worried about documents, documents, really? I mean, he was a Republican worried about, oh, there's going to be too much to read.

They're not, they don't care about that, they're just going to bully people and roll past them. really interesting question today is, what did the Republican senators know and when did they know it? Yeah, definitely. I also kind of want to mention this thing that's been on my mind, the entirety of the Kavanaugh confirmation process, is that there are still Democrats, there are still Democratic senators who have telegraphed that they will vote to confirm him. That's amazing. And it's crazy to me. It's absolutely, I mean, when it comes down to these people, and it's always, By the way, it's always the same Democratic senators who vote for Republican interests.

It's the same ones who voted to confirm Gina Haspel. It's the same ones who voted to confirm Gorsick. It's the same people. And at that point, I'm kind of thinking, don't we just have Republicans in positions of power in the Democratic Party? Isn't that what's actually going on? Because if all the Republicans in lockstep are voting for a terrible person to be in the Supreme Court, and then Democrats can't get the same lockstep.

even as a minority? Yeah. What's going on? Well, I mean, there's incredible solidarity when it comes to Republicans, which is the reason why everyone freaked out when John McCain voted against, you know, repealing the Affordable Care Act. It was a rare thing. You don't see that with Republicans.

With Democrats, on the other hand, I mean, you see them caving to Republican interests all the time, all the time. Yeah, and by the way, like what they would say is, or what I hear is, oh, they're worried But if they vote against him, like, what about like the campaign ads, re-election? Yeah, lots of ads going out. Like, he voted against this guy you probably never heard of. That's really going to hurt him. By the way, oh, he didn't give Donald Trump the guy with a 36% approval rating.

They didn't give him the court, the judge he wanted. That's ridiculous. It seems more likely that they kind of want him. It's also incredibly frustrating to see Democrats attacking people who are further on the left than these people who are so far on the right within the same party. You know, you constantly see these attacks on Bernie or on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but I never hear people attack like Joe Mansion or, what is it, Heidi Heitkamp. Like, they just, you know, people say, well, yeah, they're in red states, so that's what they do.

But Bernie, he's, he's ruining the Democratic Party. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. I can't believe I'm about to be fair to people I can't stand politically like Kavanaugh and Mansion. But in this case, now about Mansion, to be fair, though, we can't say they don't do it. anything Democratic, because they also voted with Affordable Care Act. So the reason McCain's vote mattered is because Mansion and the other guys held. So I'm just giving you full context, but it does drive me crazy when they vote for Gorsuch and still considering voting for Kavanaugh.

Because even if you are not moved by these latest allegations, it doesn't matter. Kavanaugh is still terrible on everything else. He's pro-citizens United against Roe versus Wade. No Democrat in the right mind should vote for him. So it's deeply, deeply frustrating. Okay, I do want to do the fine sign thing, just super quick. Okay, let me find that. Okay.

So now that we know what's in the letter with the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, the question remains, why was it concealed for as long as it was, only coming out after massive public pressure, a big write-up in The Intercept and all of that? Well, apparently the woman, who we don't know the identity of, approached a Congresswoman and also Diane Feinstein. So back at that point as the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, Feinstein was preparing to lead Democratic questioning of Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

The woman contacted Feinstein's office directly. After the interactions with Congresswoman Shoe and Feinstein's offices, the woman decided not to speak about the matter publicly. She had repeatedly reported the allegations to members of Congress and watching Kavanaugh moved toward what looked like an increasingly assured confirmation. She decided to end her effort to come forward, a source close to the woman said. So it looks like she really tried, wasn't able to convince them. The media for months now has given up on any sense of anything other than the inevitability

of Kavanaugh. Feinstein apparently at one point had said that she had, let's bring this up. A source familiar with the committee's activities said that Feinstein, Staff initially conveyed to other Democratic members' offices, the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion, and that Feinstein had, quote, taken care of it. On Wednesday, after media inquiries to the Democratic members multiplied and concerned among congressional colleagues increased, Feinstein agreed to brief the other Democrats on the committee. So I don't know what taken care of it means.

Yeah. Told the woman that it wasn't going to happen. Ignored it. Yeah. So there's a couple of possibilities here. One, it was a genuine interest in protecting the woman because she did not want her name revealed and Feinstein being politically savvy would know that at some point there's an excellent chance her name would be revealed and she would be viciously attacked.

So that is possible. That is what she, she put out a statement later today saying that. She wanted to conceal a woman's identity. Another possibility is she just thought it's not right to go that far back into the past. Hence, it was too distant. I mean, it's her office talking about that, right? She just, she's old school. She is old school.

Right? And she thinks, ah, we can't do that to the guy. And remember, there's a little bit of a club, not a little bit, a lot of a club in Washington where they, yeah, they're technically on the other side, but come on, let's all be civil to one another. It's not civil to go back and do that to someone of an allegation that far in the past. There's a third possibility is that she thought it's not going to play well. Like maybe we get Kavanaugh and maybe we don't get him, but this anger is a lot of

conservatives. So you're going all the way back to high school to do this to this guy, et cetera. Democrats are the worst, they're the worst. I don't know which one it is. But the too distant line did lean obviously towards the second option. If these allegations are true, he attempted to rape someone. Like I don't care how old school you are, this is not George H.W. Bush grabbing someone's butt and making a cop-of-field joke.

This is attempted rape. It's serious. Okay? Sorry, I forgot about that. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Anyway.

So, I don't get, and by the way, oh, it's going to anger the Republicans. So what? It's so devastating that she continues to be a senator, a Democratic senator in California. She's just, who cares if you upset Republicans? Who cares? She might have, look, man, you know I got no love for a flying senator. And anybody who watches the young turks knows that. I think I have ever on my watch list on downticket.com, like if people I want to make

sure lose at some point in their careers. But we have to be open to the possibility that she really thought if I tell the other Democrats, her name is definitely going to get out. And then a world of hurt will come down upon her from the Republicans. So all those options are possible. But if she held it for political reasons or because she wanted to protect Kavanaugh because So you thought it wasn't fair. That's real bad.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we've got to take a quick break here. We're going to a whole new power panel, some new, some old, some blue, no red. Some pink. So John and Jules, thank you guys. Thank you.

And everybody check out the damage report and rated as a podcast. Give it a five star. Also no filter. Okay. All right. new power panel when we come back 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 jank huger and i'll see you soon