The Young Turks - Trump Accidentally Promotes The Young Turks

Episode Date: June 18, 2019

Trump tweeted a video of Cenk and friends. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, back on the Young Turks from the weekend. JQ Granik is sparing with you guys. Huge show ahead. Donald Trump takes us on wrong.

We take him on. That's coming on and up in a second. Alex Jones, child porn, same sentence, we'll explain later in the program. Okay, no, it's real, it's real, you'll see. And Donald Trump, of course, Klonish in a thousand different ways, but also really about the ABC interview, we'll get to that later, but also three massively important stories about war, with possibly Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. Kind of.

Okay, so those are mega important, don't lose sight of those, okay? So we're gonna do all that for you guys today. As usual, let me tell you some fun things that are coming up. Tomorrow, round two, justice is coming. Okay, just Democrats, tomorrow going to unveil a new candidate against an incumbent. And this one's gonna be a doozy. People don't know this one. They knew Queer was coming, that was announced a long time ago.

Tomorrow, on the Young Turks, you get to meet the new candidate taking on an incumbent. My guess is that Washington will panic over this one. So, can't wait, can't wait. So don't miss the show tomorrow when we drop that bomb. Okay, then number two, we are going to go to Miami to cover the presidential debate there. We hope that you show up there. Soon we'll be, actually they're already up on t.com, available to everybody. So they're not yet up on the platforms on YouTube and Facebook.

But go to t.yt.com if you haven't, check out our videos from Cedar Rapids and Des Moines and Iowa. Not just behind the scenes for the speech, but the day of Sunday, that video is fantastic. Gives you an exact sense of what happened on Sunday. I would love to repeat that in Miami. You gotta come join us, RSVP at tyt.com slash rally. Every single person there makes a difference, because the bigger the crowd, the more the politicians feel pressured to respond to it.

The more the media feels they need to cover it. And so we're trying to get, cross your fingers, maybe some candidates to come talk to you guys if you're there, and that would be a hell of an event. So try to join us, and of course, we're trying to see if we can get Anna there. If you could donate at t.t.com slash yes, we'd have a little bit larger budget, maybe we can make that happen. Come on. Okay, so t.t.com slash yes to make that happen.

And then final announcement for you guys is, speaking of Anna, on Friday, we're going to have a couple of awesome contests for you guys. We're gonna do a whole day for aspiration.com slash t-y-t. And what it's gonna do is there's substantive, wonderful stuff about banking there, and we wanna educate you and give you power to control your own money. You make any decision you want, we're just trying to arm you with the information that we have. But we're also gonna have fun.

They're gonna try to dunk me, so this is not like- Let's keep it real. We're not going to try to dunk you. I am, I don't know, I feel very empowered and I feel motivated to make it happen. So just you should frame it as they're going to dunk me. No, no, look, if they don't, I, those things where like if you miss and then you come and press the button anyway, that drives me crazy. No, I don't do that.

I don't want to get wet, I don't want to be dunked on. So if you miss, you miss, okay? So, and if you're gonna come at the king, you best not miss. So that's gonna be on Friday, and plus, this is crazy and hilarious, but we are going to do a sumo wrestling competition between me and Anna, and you're saying, what? That seems a little unfair, right? No, me against Anna and John at the same time. Okay, do you know this?

Did I agree to this? I thought you did. Oh, maybe I did. I agree to like some game show road. I'm so buried in work right now. I just say yes to everything just to get people off my back. So I guess I did say yes to it and now I'm gonna regret that. Okay, so serious information that helps you with your finances plus a ton of fun.

Wait a minute, that sounds like an aspiration.com slash TYT. That's a win-win in it. All right, feel good about where your money is. All right, let's go with tons of stories. All right. Oh shoot, I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you about the pledge and how many people signed it. up. So we're almost at 20,000 guys, you could actually put it over the top today.

So 19,969 signatures for the five pillars of the Progressive Economic Pledge, 8,937 volunteers for the TYT Army, hoping to see some of you guys in Miami for that. And by the way, so like I said, I'm talking to a couple more presidential candidates about perhaps soon signing that pledge. So a lot more to come, fun times. All right. We know that Donald Trump loves to watch Fox News, but does he ever pay attention to any other type of programming, especially programming from his opposition?

Well, over the weekend, he tweeted a video that features our coverage on election night. Take a look. Because we don't care. Okay, have Kentucky. Who cares? Kentucky. No, we love you in Kentucky. Indiana.

Indiana, with it's West Virginia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming with its vote, North Dakota, and South Dakota, Texas. Up and down the middle of the country, all red. Arkansas, Louisiana, the state of Montana, Missouri. It was at 80% an hour ago for Clinton. What is it now? 68%. Okay, God damn it, I'm nervous. Ohio.

Oh, Ohio, gone. Idaho. Okay, yeah, I don't see a flannel slide here. I don't see it at all. North Carolina. God damn it, if we need Florida, are you sh-me? Florida. It is fucking panic time.

New York. Donald Trump, now the favorite to win the president. Iowa. New York Times now has it at 95% chance. Utah. And still win, but in order to do so, she has to win Wisconsin. Wisconsin. God damn.

Okay, so a couple of things about that. Trump is obsessed. This is the second time he sent that video. The video has two parts, the beginning part where there's a whole host of celebrities saying that Donald Trump can't win. And then I'm also in that compilation, but I never say he can't win because I don't believe that as you're gonna see it in a second. And then he has a second part about election night, and that's mainly us.

Now, why do they have us featured there? Because we're one of the few people who actually care and cover the election night like we actually care. So others are dispassionate, like, oh, I suppose Donald Trump has won, isn't it? Right. So now some Democrats will get on us from time to time and say, oh, you know, you, Jank, you sort of helped to start the just Democrats, and those go after democrating incumbents, and are you guys ever going to attack Republicans?

Well, obviously, you've never watched a show for a single second. We attack Republicans, trust me, ask any Republican, right? But you can see on that night, we were pissed. That part is absolutely accurate. And I was mad, I wasn't sad, I was mad, and you could watch the whole tape for you if it's all over the internet, okay, the compilation videos, our actual videos, et cetera. But I was mainly mad at the Democratic Party, and if you ask me why we go after Democratic Establishing, because they're the clowns who lost the Donald Trump.

I told them they were gonna lose if they kept going in that direction. They didn't listen, they thought we were biased, we turned out to be right, and then they come out and now we'll look at what they're looking to do now. They're looking to double down and go with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton 2.0. Make that same mistake, and we're the ones trying to warn you not to make that mistake. Yeah, so it's funny because people will send us that video or videos of us covering the election all the time thinking, oh, we're gonna troll them and get under their skin, but more And more often than not, I kind of laugh at it, laugh at ourselves, right?

Like, it's kind of amusing to watch, so I get it. But at the same time, you're absolutely right in that we don't do this because we're just looking to make some money, we do it because we're actually invested in the country's future. So yes, there was anger that night, I certainly felt anger. And I differ from you a little bit, Jank. Yes, I certainly had that anger geared toward the failures of the Democratic Party, there's There's no question about that. But I was also mad at women who voted for Trump.

Like there's no question about that either. Many of whom are now coming out speaking to CNN in various news outlets and indicating that they regret voting for him. And the reason why I was so angry with them is because when someone tells you who they are, believe them. When Trump treats you like a second class citizen, don't think that it's just for campaigning. He thinks women are second class citizens. And he's shown that over and over again during his presidency.

So now, let's go to the issue of whether the right-wingers are right, that just like everybody else in the media and everybody else in the Democratic Party, we thought that Trump was gonna win and ha-ha to us. Well, I was on ABCs this week right after the DNC. This was when Hillary Clinton was at her very top. She never pulled better than the day that we recorded this. Watch back then. I've got Trump at 279, 259.

I gave him Florida, Ohio. He was a loser a minute ago. I didn't know, listen. So in his life, he's had a great track record of failure, bankruptcy, he's running from Vietnam, everything like that. But he's a populist candidate when the country's angry and you've run, and it's the most establishment candidate we've ever seen against him. It was a terrible idea by the Democrats to support Hillary Clinton.

So you're so hot against him today because you think he's going to win. I'm very worried. And if the Democrats are not really, really worried that in this populist time, Donald Trump doesn't have an excellent chance when they're completely wrong. And I remember the Saturday before the election, you had sent an email to various hosts at TYT, myself included, indicating that you were worried that Trump was going to win. Yeah, I wrote you guys saying I have an impending sense of doom. And I tweeted out a milder version of that on that same day.

So I wrote back on November 5th a couple of days before the election happened in 2016. I hope for once that the establishment is right and Hillary wins easily, but I wouldn't bet on it. I'm super nervous about this election. So if you're going, ha, ha, the young turks got it wrong. You, in fact, it's ironic because you're the one who has it wrong. So the polling indicated Hillary Clinton was going to win. I reported on that and I said, well, if the polling is correct, Hillary Clinton should win. But it is nowhere near where the other outlets have it.

I remember we came in on that day and immediately started talking about how New York Times and Huffington Post were wrong. Huffington Post had a 98.4% chance that Hillary Clinton was going to win. Me and Ben Mankowitz immediately started saying wildly off, totally off. And even on election day with her winning in the polling, we said, watch out, he still has a very significant chance of winning. And unfortunately, we were right about that. Now, I don't notice Donald Trump tweeting out our accurate predictions.

I also don't notice them- He doesn't tweet out anything accurate. That's right, to be fair, he's never been accurate in his life. I also don't remember any of the right-wing tweeting out 2018 election night, because we show our emotion either way, okay, we care about the news, and on 2018, we kicked your ass. I don't see any right-wing compilations of the night, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, be Joe Crowley, Hey, if you're a right winger, Joe Crowley was the number four Democrat in the House, right? Yeah. I don't see you going around, showing our video of me going, down goes Crowley.

I don't remember you guys showing the videos of me accurately saying that Accio-Cortez would win. And then a lot of the Justice Democrats would win, and now there are seven in the House. So look, it isn't about just going with who you want to win. See, that would be bias. It's okay to have a perspective and say, I do not want Donald Trump to win. to win. I very much say that today as well as I did in 2016. But the question is who's actually going to win?

Those are two separate questions. And on that issue, when I support progressive candidates on the left wing, people say, oh, you're biased because you like them. No, we have been accurate about people on the left wing and the right wing when they have a chance of winning and we've accurately assessed that. And if you thought just Democrats did well last time, by the way, wait to get a load of 2020 And more of that is on its way right now, just Democrats.com. One point that I want to make is, look, it's just incredible how Trump's mindset is stuck

on 2016, right? He's been in this perpetual mode of campaigning. He doesn't have any real interest in being a president. All he wants to do is campaign and also reminisce about 2016. He reminds me of Al Bundy obsessing over his high school football days, right? Like, let's move on, you're the president of the United States. United States, let's do something a little more productive with your time. And then it also reminds me of athletes who always want to make themselves out to be the underdog,

who somehow managed to overcome all odds and win. Yeah. Like just move on, okay, we got it, you won the election. So what are you gonna do after you win the election? Because he hasn't accomplished anything other than engage in trade wars, put us on the brink of war with various countries, Venezuela, Iran, possibly Russia. North Korea. I mean, he's a mess.

And anyway. He has only one accomplishment, and that's tax cuts for the rich. Yes. Is that why you voted for him, right wing, who loves to laugh? Guess who's laughing now? You're the schmucks that he took money from and redistributed to his friends at the top, including himself and his family. So look, there's a reason why he's tweeting this today, because this is an old video and

he had tweeted it before too. There's one smaller potential reason is now that I'm on CNN, maybe I'm getting under his skin. I think that that might be it. Okay, my God, imagine if I, he, during the campaign, if I'm on TV all the time, TV that he's watching, I'm gonna get under his orange skin so bad. That loser, man, I'm gonna go after him and like no one's ever gone after him. And so that's going to be wonderful.

But the larger reason is the polling came out and he's getting shellacked by the two leading Democratic candidates. Both Biden and Sanders now has a bigger lead than Biden does against Donald Trump. So Trump's like, oh, the socialist, crazy Bernie. Well, crazy Bernie's kicking your ass by 12 points. He actually has the biggest lead against Donald Trump. Why? A populist that actually wants to help people and raise their wages and isn't full of crap

like Donald Trump. So that's the real danger. And that's why he's panicked and sending out these nostalgia videos about 2016, because Because it looks like 2020 is going to be pretty bleak for him. And if you're not sure, hey, right wing, QyT.com, come and see on election night. Yep. All right, let's move on to some foreign policy. Senator Lindsey Graham is notably a war hawk and he has been pushing for U.S. invasion in Venezuela

for months now. The latest example includes an interview he did where he essentially says, hey, maybe we need to go after Venezuela just to teach all these other. other countries a lesson. Take a look. Maduro is still in charge in Venezuela, North Korea is still shooting rockets, and Iran is hitting tankers. Is this a big time for the president? It's a time of testing. He said Maduro has to go. He's right. Give Cuba an ultimatum. Without Cuba, Maduro doesn't last one day, tell Cuba to get out of Venezuela, do what Reagan did in Grenada, put military force on the table when it comes

to rocket men. Letters don't matter anymore to me. It's performance. We need points on the board. Start with your own backyard. Tell Cuba, if you're not out of Venezuela in a week and people are starving and dying in Venezuela because Maduro is such a thug, then we're making a mistake. Fix Venezuela and everybody else will know you're Syria. We need points on the board, as if this is some sort of game, as if getting the United States involved in any type of military action against Venezuela is nothing more than some football game. I mean, this is ridiculous.

And this isn't the first time he's made this point. In fact, he has written a Wall Street Journal op-ed, which we'll get to in just a second. And back in May, he said something very similar, again on Fox News. Let's take a quick look at that. And then, Jank, I want your thoughts. Trump said rightly, Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. The entire region supports the Trump approach that Guido is the legitimate leader. He wouldn't be in power without six or seven thousand Cuban security forces in Venezuela.

I would do exactly what Reagan did. I would give Cuba an ultimatum to get out of Venezuela. If they don't, I would let the Venezuelan military know. You've got to choose between democracy and Maduro. And if you choose Maduro and Cuba, we're coming after you. This is in our backyard. Trump said that he was for democracy against socialism. And he's drawn a red line when it comes to Maduro.

If he doesn't act, everybody in the world is going to think he's weak. If he does act, it helps us with North Korea, Iran, Russia, everybody else. Okay, so Lindsey Graham is a class A warmonger, and he is among the worst senators we have ever had. So I'm gonna get back to him in one second, but note on mainstream media, it's kind of easy to pick it on Donald Trump because he says outlandishly incorrect things, false, misleading, and outright lies over and over against.

So relatively easy to fact check him, and he's not part of the establishment. So you're actually not losing much power or access by doing that, right? But Lizzie Graham is part of the establishment. And so when it comes to guys like Lindsey Graham, you got kid gloves on, right? So kids gloves with Lindsey, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, the list goes on and on. But he's 10 times a warmonger Trump is, Trump is the one that's gonna stumble us into a war if any of this stuff comes to fruition, he'll be ultimately responsible. But it is Lindsey Graham that has pushed for every war and every one of those wars in my

lifetime has been an absolute disaster because a warmonger is like Lindsey Graham. So now let's break down what he said. He said, it'll be like Grenada. Are you serious? Grenada is a tiny little island. Venezuela is a gigantic country. It's gonna be nothing like Grenada. And what are you gonna do?

In Grenada, we did a full scale invasion. Are we doing a full scale invasion of Venezuela, you moron? I mean, you're calling him a moron, but that's exactly what he wants. He says fix Venezuela and everybody else will know you're serious. Fix Venezuela? So what are you gonna do? You're gonna do a full-scale invasion of Venezuela and how long is it gonna take to fix it? What does it mean to fix it?

So I know the same thing we heard in Vietnam. You know, you gotta destroy the village in order to save the village. So apparently we have to bomb and annihilate Venezuela so that we can fix it, right? We're not gonna fix it if we invent. We're going to bomb it. That's what we're going to do. And Lindsey Graham and his defense contractor friends and the people who bribed them legally in our insane system are going to celebrate.

They're going to have a little cake at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And I'm going to say, Lindsay, way to go. A couple more million bucks and bribes coming your way, Lindsay. And no one on TV will call him out. This is insanity to go to war like this against Venezuela. And he says, oh, this will help sever ties with Cuba if we threaten war. We've already threatened war. And Cuba's not going to, you think Cuba's making the difference in Venezuela?

That, like, you're like Cuba's such a big, gigantic military and economic force that is propping up Maduro. And without Cuba, oh my God, Maduro would collapse in a day. I've heard these fairer tales from these neo-conservatives for the last 20 years. Oh, all we have to do is just invade Iraq and we'll be greeted it as liberators and they'll throw rose petals at our feet. It'll only take a couple of weeks, we heard. Now, you've got idiots like John Bolton saying, oh, Iran, we can just turn off all the lights, and then they'll surrender. What on God's green earth are you talking about?

They're not going to surrender, and neither is Venezuela. And Cuba's not going to leave. They're going to get more entrenched. Then we're in a war with Venezuela and Cuba. That's right. And God help us if there's Russian troops there. Exactly. So, you know, one thing that stands out in every interview Lindsay Graham does in regard to Venezuela

is this fake concern about the people of Venezuela, as if you're really, as if he's really worried about the hunger there, the economic situation there, about the lack of democracy there. In reality, he doesn't care about the people. The United States has never cared about liberating the people of the countries that we invade, including Iraq. So what is the number one interest that someone like Lindsey Graham has in invading a country like Venezuela?

Well, first of all, yes, there are the military contract. who fund his campaigns, but there's also the economic interest, which, by the way, the Trump administration and various war mongers in Congress have actually been pretty transparent about. Now, earlier I mentioned how Graham had written a Wall Street Journal op-ed on this issue, and so I want to read you a portion of that op-ed that stood out to me, and again, it has to do with U.S. economic interests in Venezuela, let's go to Graphic 18. He says, a free Democratic Venezuela has the potential to be a great economic and national security

partner to the United States. That won't happen as long as Cuba is interfering in Venezuela, propping up Mr. Maduro, and working against the interests of both America and the Venezuelan people. No, this isn't about Americans, this isn't about the Venezuelan people. This is about U.S. business interests, this is all about oil, this is all about ensuring that this, you know, military industrial complex continues running on, you know, what it's been running on for a long time, which is US taxpayer money going to these massive contracts that these contractors get because of people like Lizzie Graham.

He does not care about the people of Venezuela, plain and simple. So look, I said Russian troops, they're unlikely to be Russian troops there, but could they be Russian officials in Venezuela? Yes, and so that could also be a problem if they get in the middle, because what I don't want as a broader war, I don't want any war at all, but these idiots will stumble into any war at any time and fight a way to make it broader and broader and broader. And then, so finally to Anna's point, there are dozens upon dozens of dictators throughout the world.

But there's two that we have chosen to focus on and continually threaten war against. No, not North Korea, which according to the latest results, has 30 nuclear warheads already stockpiled. But no, we claim we care about nuclear energy and war and weapons when it comes to Iran. Korea has him and Donald Trump says, no, it's okay, I fell in love with their dictator. No, the two people that were worried about, or the two countries are, Iran and Venezuela. So out of the dozens of dictators that exist in the world, we haven't picked the two that happened to sit on a mountain of oil.

What a wild coincidence. And if that wasn't clear enough, John Bolton went on Fox News and said, yes, we are going to look out for American business interests and specifically American oil company interests. He said it, he said it on TV. So just for the rest of the media, focus, focus on why they're actually doing this. And do not give Lindsey Graham or John Bolton the benefit of the doubt. You're not in the business of helping politicians, or at least you shouldn't be. You're supposed to be watchdogs to make sure that you are checking their lies.

That's not just Donald Trump. That implies to all politicians, especially once trying to get our soldiers killed and waste trillions of dollars more, now in a war possibly in our backyard. It's about as bad an idea as you can have. It's time to fact check people like Lindsey Graham who love every single war and is trying to push us into another one. Well, Bolton and Pompeo are on a mission to invade Iran, and we want to give you the update to that story and more when we return from the...

We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-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.

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I hope the latest person that just stems are primary rhymes with Pansy and a low seat. Okay, well, come and see. Tomorrow we announce the next challenger against the sitting Democratic incumbent. We were gonna do it on the Young Turks. 6 p.m. Eastern obviously is when the show starts on t.y.m. Marita says, Trump rewatches his election victory more than my husband and I have ever watched our wedding video. 100% true, no question about it.

Well, you know, the good news is he keeps watching that video, so he's got a chock full of young Turks. Do you ever, do you ever watch your wedding, have you ever once watched your wedding video? Yeah, I got two thirds of the way through it, because we were showing the kids. Oh, okay. Okay, and then there's all these great toasts in it. I don't know, we just never made it to that. You know, I was there, it's okay.

Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, Ross says, let's be real, Trump is so obsessed with 2016, because it's the only time in his life that he's ever actually won anything, even remotely semi-legitimately in his life. 100% true. And then you could see it in that ABC video we showed you. You never want a single thing in his life before that, so that's why he's so excited. Anyway, on a lighter note on Twitter, Kelly Christine says Anna's shirt today is so cute. Thank you.

And as a TYT fashion icon, killing it later. Oh damn, thank you. Okay, all right. And gaming Pegasus says just got done moving into a new place and watching hashtag TYT live, nice way to spend the afternoon, being reminded of 2016. Watching the establishment make the same mistakes, those that don't learn from their mistakes, repeat them, and we're right in the middle of it. And by the way, again, look, I don't, I harp on it because it's so important.

the mainstream media helping to make the same mistakes. Oh, you should pick someone just like Hillary Clinton. Hey, the Iraq war was a disaster, but I bet the Iran war will be easy. No, wrong again, Bob, which leads us to the next story. Before we get to the next story, though, I think our audience deserves to know about Juneteenth. Oh, yeah, great. So Juneteenth is happening. We are doing a special in honor of Juneteenth, and it will take place on Wednesday, June 19th,

which makes a lot of sense, obviously. So you can check it out by going to t.y.t.com slash live at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific. J.R. Jackson will be part of this coverage. And also, we have Adrian Lawrence and Brooke Thomas. So there will be more people involved in the coverage, but you should check it out. Yeah, and look, if you ever go to tYT.com and we're live, you'll see a red live button somewhere on the page. You click on that, you'll get the live show. Okay?

All right. What's next, Anna? All right. It's becoming more likely that the United States will pursue some sort of military action against Iran. Now this follows escalating tensions with Iran even over the weekend. Now first, there has been an update on what Iran plans to do if European allies to the United States continue to listen to Trump and his threats to force them to follow through with American

sanctions against Iran. If they do that, well, Iran is going to go ahead and violate the Iran nuclear deal, because it really has no reason to follow through with a nuclear deal that the United States is pulled out of and has now imposed sanctions over. Now let me give you some more details. According to the reports, Iran's atomic energy organization said that within days, it expects that the country will have produced and kept in its stockpiles more low enriched uranium. the sort used to fuel power plants than allowed by the 2015 deal.

So here is an example of them possibly violating the Iran nuclear deal. They also left open the possibility that Iran might soon begin enriching the uranium to much higher levels of purity, edging it closer to what would be necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. And finally, according to a spokesman with Iran's atomic energy organization, this individual says that Iran might also increase the level of uranium enrichment to 20% for use as fuel for the Tehran research reactor, which the United States actually supplied to Iran back in 1967. Iran says the facility is used to create medical isotopes for use in cancer treatment, but

the nuclear agreement limits the level of enrichment to 3.67%. Now, I want to get to some of the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration in just a second, But do you want to jump in, Jay? Yeah. So very important part of that is if you're saying, well, they're still doing uranium enrichment at 3.67%. No, if it is a low level of uranium enrichment, it cannot be used in an atomic bomb. It is only for nuclear energy reasons that you could use it.

So that's just a scientific fact. If they do crank it up to 20%, then yes, they could use it in weapons. So that is why this is such a big story. But just a point of clarification, we say that they would then be in violation of the treaty. That's true, but let's remind everybody that we are already in violation of the treaty. We ripped up the treaty. That's as much of a violation as you could possibly have. So America is saying we're not abiding by the treaty anymore.

We put new sanctions on you and we have forced all of our allies to abide by those sanctions. But even though we're not holding up our end of the deal, you must hold up every single part of the end of your deal. Well, what the hell kind of deal is that? That's not a deal. So it's actually shocking that Iran has stayed in the deal this long. They're saying, and it's only because Europe, Russia, and China have stayed in the deal that Iran did not quote unquote violate it yet.

But now they're saying, look, guys, in effect, you've all pulled out of the deal because you're going along with the U.S. sanctions against us. And you're also cutting off our financial dealings in the rest of the world. And now America's labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, that's the court. core of their military, a terrorist group, which means that they cannot do business anywhere in the world. So they say, well, you left us absolutely no choice. And the fact that Europe, for example, has stayed in the deal, doesn't really mean anything

to us because you guys are doing the same sanctions we had before the deal. Right. And sorry, the reason that they are saying now that, hey, then we're gonna go back there and reaching uranium, and there's an extra layer of this that we'll explain a little bit about how Trump put them in an absolutely no-win situation regarding the specifics. But they're saying Europe, you can head this off, you just have to not listen to America's sanctions. You can do a work around the sanctions and it's technically legal.

If you do that, then we'll continue to abide by the deal. But if you don't, well, then we have no choice because there is no deal. And as much as I can't stand the Iranian government or the Revolutionary Guard or the Ayatollah on the facts, they are definitely correct. So I also wanna just note that the sanctions have hurt Iran economically, but to the point where humanitarian aid is also being impacted. And this was something that Mike Pompeo was on the record saying would not happen. He promised that people would not be hungry in Iran, the people of Iran wouldn't suffer,

that humanitarian aid wouldn't be blocked, but that certainly is happening. Now here's the part that everyone should be concerned about. While everyone in the media is focusing on nonsense, the rhetoric coming from Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration indicates that there are plans to invade Iran. So let me give you the details. According to the Jerusalem Post, since Friday of last week, the White House has been holding incessant discussions involving senior military commanders, Pentagon representatives, and advisors to Trump.

The military action under consideration would be an aerial bombardment of an Iranian facility linked to its nuclear program. The decision to carry out military action against Iran was discussed in the White House before the latest report that Iran might increase the level of uranium enrichment. So before Iran even announced that they might increase uranium enrichment, the White House was already talking about what type of military action they need to take against Iran. That's an important point to make, something to keep in mind. But with that said, let's take a look at what Mike Pompeo had to say during his interview

over the weekend on Face the Nation. The United States is considering a full range of options. We briefed the president a couple of times, we'll continue to keep them updated. You say a full range of options. Does that include a military response? Of course. Of course, the president will consider everything we need to do to make sure, right? By the way it's the president said, we don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The previous administration put them on a pathway that virtually guaranteed that they could get there. That is not true. That is a complete and utter lie. The Iran nuclear deal prevented Iran,

Iran from enriching uranium and from developing nuclear weapons. There were actual safeguards, there were actual ways of checking in and ensuring that they were following the demands of the Iran nuclear deal. But pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal does exactly what the Trump administration alleges they don't want, which is them continuing with uranium enrichment. But here's the thing, they claim they don't want that. But in reality, the Trump administration wants that. They want to invade.

So I want to talk more about the invasion in a second, but to go back to that point that I was alluding to about what specific detail in this new Trump directive puts Iran in a no-win situation and leads to what Anna is referring to here, is that in the old deal, Iran was shipping the uranium out of the country, so they had no access to it. So that was great, because they needed for some level of energy reasons. And in fact, now they're having medical supplies issues connected to our sanctions, et cetera. But it doesn't matter because in the old deal, they were shipping the uranium out of the country. Now Trump's team is saying, if they ship any uranium out of the country, if any country

receives the uranium that they're shipping out, they will have extra sanctions. Wait, why do we want them to keep the uranium? That doesn't make any sense at all. The only reason you would do that is if you wanted to say, ha ha, they're building up uranium so you could bomb them. So this is an obvious trick to get us into a war. And so now again, Jerusalem posts in the story that Anna mentioned saying that not only are they planning a bombing of Iran, you know, there's another word for that that's called war and invasion.

They say, according to a Western diplomat, the bombing will be massive, but we'll be limited to a specific target. Yeah, that's usually how wars work, right? You do a massive bombing of a country, and then it goes, oh, okay, thank you very much. We won't respond at all. No, of course they're gonna respond. And the minute that they respond, Pompeo and Bolton are gonna walk into that idiot Donald Trump's office and go, hey, you're gonna seem weak, and they're gonna bring in Lindsey Graham

with him. And Lindsey Graham's gonna say, you're gonna seem weak. Right. You don't wanna be weak, Donald. Remember Donnie, how your dad used to call you a weak little idiot, right? And that's what you're gonna be if you don't respond to Iran countering our measures, right? And they're going to rope him into that war so easy. Hey, listen, if Iran did a massive bombardment of one of our nuclear energy facilities,

what would we do? We would immediately start a full-scale invasion of Iran. 100%. Everybody knows that, there's not a single right winger who would deny that, there's not a single person in the media with his straight face could deny that, but yet the media treats it like, oh, we'll just be doing a massive bombardment of Iran, and that'll be it. No, that won't be it. Then we'll have a massive war in the Middle East, one much bigger than the Iraq war.

Iran is four times the size of Iraq. So I want to go back to Pompeo in just a second, but I want to quickly mention that, unfortunately, the only real hope we have to prevent an invasion of Iran or any type of military action against Iran is Trump's base. Because Trump's base is not in favor of more military action abroad. In fact, one of the reasons why Trump won was because he had this populist message of bringing our troops home. Why are we sending them to all of these wars?

So if the strategy is performed correctly, I guess, we could get into Trump's head by convincing him, hey, your base doesn't like this, you should listen to your base, as opposed to the war, Hawks that surround you. But I don't know if that's going to happen, because as you're about to see, Pompeo is on a mission. He wants military action against Iran. Here's another example. China gets over 80% of its crude oil transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea,

Japan. These nations are incredibly dependent on these resources. We're prepared to do our part. We always defend freedom of navigation. We're going to work to build out a set of countries that have deep vested interest in keeping that straight open to help us do that. Do you have the legal authorization for a strike on Iran? We always have the authorization to defend American interest graph.

These are attacks on fundamental international norms and now on American interests. And we always have the right to defend our country. So they claim that, oh, well, Iran attacked the Japanese ship. And so we have a right to defend all the ships there. That is what's going to give us the justification to start a war with Iran. start a war with Iran. Now, did Iran actually attack that ship? Every eyewitness on the boat says, no, there was no mines planted. It was incoming from the air. So it was either from a plane or just a missile. But it was not planted on the side of the ship, as the Pentagon says.

So every witness says that what Pompeo is saying is an absolute lie. Okay? Now, luckily there's the resistance. And so Adam Schiff, a huge part of the resistance for the Democratic Party. So he goes on television. Let's see what he has to say about the Pentagon's lies trying to get us into a war. And Pompeo and Bolton, the worst neo-conservants in the country, clearly marching us to war. Let's see what he says. There's no question that Iran is behind the tax. I think the evidence is very strong and compelling.

In fact, I think this was a class A screw up by Iran. Now, look, to be fair, the context of the rest of Adam Schiff was saying we should have stuck with a treaty and that there, and the Trump team's headed in the wrong direction. But when you agreed to their lies in the first place and say Iran did attack those ships, they don't care about your opinion. They're going to say, hey, even the top Democrat in the intelligence community in Congress said that it was true. Iran attacked. Iran attacked.

Adam Schiff said it. And he's part of the resistance. And then he says Iran attacked. It's just not true. The evidence is comically wrong. And so, but Schiff goes out there. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's Iran's fault. It's Iran's fault.

And by the way, these are the same guys in the Democratic Party who voted for the Iraq war. And now they go, oh, are they going to attack Iran? I'm against it, but boy, Iran really does have it coming the way that they have attacked the ships. So Adam Schiff, another part of the assistance, they're not resisting a goddamn thing. And so when you have the Democratic Party who's supposed to be resisting the worst president we've ever had, going along with his lies. And you have the neoconservist surrounding Donald Trump, and you have a president who's incredibly

stupid. Are we gonna stumble our way into a war? Yes. Almost certainly now. Look, before I wasn't saying that, after today's news, we're in a world of trouble, guys. So you've got Lindsey Graham threatening war against Venezuela today. You've got apparently a secret program in the Defense Department that's trying to start a cyber war with Russia. Russia, and now you've got massive bombardment of Iran as imminent.

So is Trump going to either on purpose or accidentally start a war? Now I've got it at high certainty. And remember, the last factor, those polls that he keeps claiming are fake, he knows for a factor true. He fired his pollsters because they came with bad news saying you're losing by a ton to both Biden and Sanders. Sanders is even beating you worse than Biden, okay? So he's in a panic, and his poll numbers have never come close to 50%.

He's a deeply unpopular president who has almost no chance of getting reelected. So, and now he's got a bunch of neoconservists whispering in his ear, oh, you gotta go to war, you gotta go to war. War's the strong thing to do. The voters will see it as strength. No, by the way, Anna's right, I mean, I don't know, maybe Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it when it comes to his base or Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schip. But if ever his base is going to feel betrayed, it's when Donald Trump, after saying

the Iraq war was a disaster and we shouldn't have gone in, starts a war that is four times as large. Well, when we come back from the break, I'm gonna give you the details on cyber war with Russia. This story is out of control. You don't want to miss it. We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways of big tech companies.

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That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. 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 yt.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on the Young Turks. I bathe in a very stable geniuses tears rights in. There's so many things on TYT this week. I'm going to miss live. At least I can still watch them after the fact. That's true. If you remember, you could watch the show anytime you'll want. So you get to see that special announcement tomorrow of the Just Democrat that's coming. JustDemocrats.com slash donate, by the way. Jessica Cisneros for Congress.com slash donate. She's running as Quayar called, quote, Trump's favorite Democrat. So check that out. Make sure you guys are donating to her. She crossed 100,000 in a little over 24 hours. So it's a new day in America, man. In the old days, it took us forever to get past $100,000

dollars to be able to hire campaign managers, field directors, et cetera. Now people know this is serious and we're going to win these races. Yvonne says, honest question, I get the sense that even the right wingers, overall, not all of them obviously, are not too sure about the war with Iran. It feels different than the lead up to Iraq. Am I fooling myself? What do you guys see here since? No, no, you're right that if you're looking at it online and you're looking at the right

wingers, even people we despise the right wing trolls, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think they want a war with Iran either. But no one cares. The only person who cares, honestly, is Donald Trump. So, and I know it sounds funny, and we're gonna talk more about it in the Russia's story, but I just, I don't even want to spit out this sentence, but he's your best hope that we don't start a war, best hope within his administration. His base is your best hope.

Yes. Because Trump, I don't think he's invested one way or the other, but he is in the other, but he is invested in ensuring that he gets reelected, and he's not going to get reelected unless his base believes that he's actually following through on his promises. One of his promises was to not invade countries in the Middle East, and that's exactly what Pompeo and Bolton are convincing him to do. So I don't know how we do this, and it sounds crazy, but we need to somehow unify with his base on this issue and amplify the message that it is not popular for him to invade Iran.

So look, on the other hand, everyone else in his administration and in the sense, they don't care about the base at all. They'd rather spit on voters than give a damn what they think. So Pompeo and Bolton, they don't care about any base. They don't care of 98% of the countries against the war. Lindsay Graham doesn't give a damn. They'll start that war without blinking. And unfortunately, a lot of the media, in my opinion, will go along.

Skullslinger writes, and just want to say thanks for the Juneteenth program, looking forward to it. And Christina Hilby on Twitter says, watching TYT on Pluto TV, love it. Wow, I love that. We're channel 116 on Pluto. Everybody check it out. Pluto's a great way to watch the Young Turks 24-7. So you get a lot of our programmings, like a 24-hour cable show.

You get it on Zumo, Roku, on the Roku channel. You also have our app on Apple TV and the Android TVs. But Pluto is a fantastic way to watch it, Channel 116, check it out there. We're also on live on all those platforms, okay? So let's get going. All right, the U.S. military has been increasing its digital warfare with Russia by attacking its electric grid using cyber warfare. And the fascinating part of this military strategy is it appears that members of our military

are doing so without speaking to Trump about it, without getting his permission, and they're able to do this because of both Trump and Congress handing over their power to the military. So let me give you the details. Anna, before you get to the details, this might surprise people, but this is completely unacceptable to do to the president, even if it's President Trump, and maybe even more or so to President Trump in this case. So if you watch the young Turks on a regular basis, you will not see us defending Donald Trump very often, to say the least, right?

Everybody knows how much we can't stand them. And we're open and honest about our perspective. But the military is surping the power of the civilian leadership, and even if it's a cyber war, starting wars without permission from the president, is completely and utterly unacceptable. And they're particularly doing an end run around Trump because they know how much Trump likes Russia. Now, I think that Trump does like Russia for illegitimate reasons. I think that Trump is beholden to Vladimir Putin.

That doesn't change the fact that you definitely should need the permission of the president. So we can't just say, hey, the president might be compromised, we're not gonna do anything about that. But instead, we're gonna take away presidential power and hand it over to the military. That is not how our former government works. This is incredibly dangerous. They need to put this power back in the hands of the president, believe it or not. Right.

Even if it's Trump. Okay. Hold. Okay. You love to step on my lines. Okay. Let me get to the details and then comment because you're right. But let me tell you what they're doing.

So first of all, it's no surprise that Russia has in the past attempted to attack the United States using cyber warfare. Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States. Now, that is an issue, there's no question about that. And the focus should be on ensuring that we take care of any vulnerabilities we have, so Russia won't be able to use malware against us. But instead, it appears that the military is, you know, avoiding, dealing with Trump in order

to launch its own cyber warfare against Russia. strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth, at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. So two administration officials said they believed Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place implants inside the Russia grid. Now, the way that they were able to do that was through a vote that unfortunately passed in Congress. Congress has given the military more power to essentially avoid dealing with Trump in order to carry out these types of missions. But Trump also, unfortunately,

has helped with this effort by essentially telling the military, if there is a national security concern and you need to take action, take that action. And they're taking action. But the reason Why they're avoiding dealing with Trump is because they think, hey, you know what, Trump is either going to do one of two things. First of all, he appears to like Russia. He appears to have a close relationship with Putin. So he might actually come out against cyber warfare against Russia. And then the second issue is, well, Trump is known to unfortunately and very publicly mention,

you know, military strategies that are not supposed to be disclosed publicly. like sensitive military intel. And so they're worried that he might publicly talk about those issues because he has in the past. Yeah, let me give the direct quote from the New York Times graphic six here, guys. Penning on intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Trump for concern over his reaction and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

Now, look, three parts of that, that are weird to unacceptable. So if you think the president is going to give over our national security secrets to our adversaries, you have a different problem, and you should address that problem. But here, we're not at all addressing that problem. No one in the administration is, no one in the military is, no one in the Democratic Party is. Nancy Pelosi says, get out of jail free card. I'm never going to go after him under any circumstance. So everybody knows this guy or everybody's at the very least concerned that this guy's in the pocket of Russia and will immediately rush over and give all of our intelligence to them.

Yet we do nothing about it. That's a big problem, but a separate problem. And then they say they're worried about his overreaction. Yes, we have a temperamental man child who is not mentally stable. That's a separate problem and one that you should immediately address with the 25th Amendment, but nobody's doing a goddamn thing about it. So instead, we're keeping secrets from the president because he's too mentally unstable and possibly treasonous. Look at that, that's insane, do something. Now the only thing that they are doing is the one thing that's unacceptable. Instead of actually taking action to get a sane president into office, what they're saying

is let's just work around him. Ignore the president, ignore the executive branch in this sense, while the military is also part of the executive branch, but ignore the commander in chief. And did you hear that exact quote? The reason I read the exact quarter is because they said they're afraid the president would countermand it. That means they know that the president is likely opposed to what the military is doing. That's why the military is saying, I'm not gonna ask the president, I'm just gonna start

a cyber war without the civilians. Exactly. So last summer, Congress slipped in this provision in the military authorization bill. And so that is precisely the reason why the Pentagon and specifically the cyber command portion of the military is able to completely avoid dealing with Trump and carry out this cyber warfare as they please. And that is disastrous for a number of different reasons.

First of all, we shouldn't have any type of military rule in this country. But more importantly, what is this going to do to stoke tensions with Russia, right? Because it's a delicate balance. It's one thing to want to protect the United States from cyber warfare that could be committed by Russia or any other country, any other adversary. But it's a completely different thing to take an offensive role in going after Russia with cyber warfare, and more importantly, going after their electric grid. So again, this is totally insane.

John Bolton says, we have to show them, quote, that you will pay a price. But that's what John Bolton says about everything. I mean, you can bring John Bolton flowers and be like, you will pay a price for this, right? So, okay, do you think that we're going to make Russia pay a price and they're not going to do anything about it? Because in Bolton's world, you could just do a massive bombardment of Iran and they'll immediately surrender. And Lizzie Graham says, we should score points in Venezuela by invading them and bombing them. And what? They're just going to give in.

And whenever you ask a neoconservative, well, how will they react? They go, I don't care what they do. We're just going to bomb them and they're going to take it, right? You think Russia and Vladimir Putin are just going to sit there and take it? Now, I'm not saying that Russia's got clean hands here. Not remotely. I think that they definitely interfered in our elections. Whether they colluded with Trump's a different issue, one that is greatly complicated by his business interests with Russia for decades.

But they're not innocent. I mean, they apparently targeted in their hacking, the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Cooperation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kansas. They also infiltrated the Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville. And so it's not just voting that they're meddling in. It's social media is the least of our problems. So now, should we defend against that? 100%.

Should we have the capacity if things were to get super? super ugly to counteract that offensively if they strike again. Yes, we should have that capacity. That doesn't mean we should launch that capacity or launch it without the permission of the commander in chief. That's insane. Now Donald Trump might be embarrassed about this story, which is why he has decided to lash out against the New York Times for publishing the story as opposed to lashing out against his

own military, which is obviously avoiding him to kill. carry out this cyber warfare. So he tweeted the following in response to the time saying, do you believe that the failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing cyber attacks on Russia? This is a virtual act of treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our country. He also says, also not true. Anything goes with our corrupt news media today, yada, yada, yada, yada. You get the point. Of course, he ends it with the enemy of the people. Okay. Okay, so two things about that. One, how would you know it's not true? The whole point

of the story is they're going around you and you're too stupid to realize it. Exactly. Okay, second of all, there was a part of that that I agree with. Not that treason by the New York Times is their job to report the news. But, you know, we got Edward Snowden hiding. We got Julian Assange in prison, Chelsea Manning went to prison for seven years over what? Because they leaked classified information. What is this? Classified information. Now it appears to be a leak by the neo-concertatives inside the administration trying

to egg on a war. Is there going to be any accountability for that? No, never. If an outsider leaks information, oh, it's an unbelievable crime and they must be punished to the ends of the earth. One of the elites, one of the powerful does it. No big deal. Oh, it's just a good source by the New York Times.

Is anybody ever going to hold this leaker accountable? No way, because they're part of the powerful. And so final thing on this guys is they're already using Orwellian language here. So instead of saying that they are going to attack Russia with cyber warfare, and by the way, that's a real attack. When Russia did it to us, we should have taken economic actions, sanctions, et cetera. And some we did against the will of Trump, but we went through Congress and did it the right way in that case, okay?

But if we attack them, they will also counterattack. And it is incredibly serious. We're talking about shutting down huge swaths of their energy, which would not only affect their economy, their defenses, physical military defenses, but it would also shut down their hospitals and potentially kill a lot of people, okay? So now we haven't done that yet, but that is what they're thinking you're doing. And what's the Orwellian language that cyber command, commander of the cyber command is using? His name is General Paul Nakasone.

He said, no, we're not doing offense, we're doing defense forward. Okay, no, that's offense. That means I'm looking to start a cyber war with Russia, and I'm not even going to tell the president. And as usual, here comes the establishment, Robert Silver's partner at the law firm Paul Hastings and a former Obama administration official says, well, we might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response just to show the world we're not lying down and taking it. So that sounds just like John Bolton and the neo-conservatives.

Oh, okay, we're gonna get some broken bones. What does that mean? But we have to show Russia how tough we are. On the same day, you have the similar guys telling everybody we've got to show how tough we are in Venezuela and how tough we are against Iran. That's a lot of wars they're planning to start. Some the president knows about and apparently some the president doesn't know about. This is an absolute disaster in the making.

When we come back from the break, we will discuss the crisis in Sudan and later in the show, the fun half of the show, we will dunk on Alex Jones because he is a creep. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.