The Young Turks - Trump And Fox News Barely Acknowledge White Terrorist Arrest

Episode Date: February 23, 2019

Trump waited a long time to even address the white nationalist that was arrested trying to plan a mass terror attack. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you. Well, go ahead and drop it. and the co-founder of Politoscope, Jackson White. Welcome to the panel. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. Good to have you both here. We have got some awesome topics we're going to be talking about. It's been a little bit of a weird day in the news. So big topics in the first hour, really big topics in the second hour as well, including the updates on both Kraft and R. Kelly

and the legal challenges that they now face. In the first hour, though, we've got the dismantling of a gang database, which is a very exciting legal development. We've got Governor Andrew Cuomo revealing the greatest tragedy for New York City and his life, wait until you hear what it is, we've got perhaps the clearest case of political corruption. Like, you know, often they say, you know, like fall the dots, like fall of the money. Yes. There's like one dot between these two things. So we're going to break down how obvious political corruption has become in the modern era.

And we're going to be starting off with some big news too. So I'm very excited to do the show with you guys. Yay, I'm glad to be here. Well, with that, why don't we jump right into it? Today, Donald Trump was forced to finally comment on the Coast Guard domestic terrorists that his administration thankfully stopped before he could put into effect his plan to kill virtually every person on the planet if he was able to. So with that in mind, the idea that this guy wanted to assassinate politicians, members

of the media, kill as many people as he could. When Donald Trump has asked about it, look how enraged he gets at what this guy wanted to do. A Coast Guard member who was arrested for threatening Democrats and other members. I'm actually getting a very final briefing and a very complete briefing in about two hours after this. I think it's a shame. Yeah, I think it's a very sad thing when a thing like that happens.

And I've expressed that, but I'm actually getting a very complete briefing in about two hours. Do you think that you bury the responsibility for moderating your language when come to that? No, I don't. I think my language is very nice. Okay, so he is, this serious topic, and he as president, is addressing it in a serious fashion. So I think that there's a couple of things to talk about there. First, he says, I've addressed this, but if he has, I haven't heard it.

I mean, he was all over the Smollett case, like he was tweeting about that, doesn't seem interested in talking about this. And the way that he expresses the thought, it's that this guy who wanted to start a race war, wanted to assassinate people in media and politics, it's sad, it's a little bit sad, which is not the way that he talks about other forms of potential terrorism in my experience. Well, I think one of the biggest things to realize at this point is that he's a little bit. is how truly not curious about the world and current events Donald Trump truly is and how objective of a statement that truly is. It's been, you know, 60% of his time spent being an executive time,

aka not doing anything. There's no way that you, this guy really, really knows anything about what he was just talking about. I highly doubt that he has any information about what he really plan to do, how he planned to take it out, the repercussions that that could have been. He talks a lot about Jesse Smollett because all he does is look for things to make him look good and things to get his base riled up. And that's all he spends his time looking for. And so I think that I don't think he's ever going to address anything other than whatever makes him look good because other than him paying no attention to it, when has he ever really demonstrated that he knows what he's talking about.

Yeah, and well, my thought is that he may have information on it, and he may know what he's talking about, but it's not a priority to him. He does not care, in part because the victims that would be attacked are those he also attacks on social media with all of his tweets and the hate that he generates. And if he has to acknowledge that this story actually exists and that this man was planning to create all this race war and murder and just mass killings, then he's going to have to acknowledge his own faults in, you know, his contribution to it. Yeah, and think about what he is giving up.

I mean, if you're the president and under you, the government stops potentially a massive terror attack, wouldn't you want to like talk about that, Trump it up, literally? And say, look, we stop this from happening, but they know how vulnerable they are in this area. They know that this guy not only weirdly had the same political opponents that Donald Trump does, both the obvious ones, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, they're the leaders, but then And also Blumenthal for some reason, who isn't a politician that many people talk about, but he is a politician, Donald Trump talks about a lot. Maxine Waters, she's not a leader in the Congress, but she does come up on Trump's Twitter

account very often. And so I think they know how his language might have contributed to, if not the origin of this guy's sort of violent, homicidal, psychopathic tendencies, certainly in directing them. Yes. And so at the end there, the second part of this video was him saying, no, I think my language is very nice, which not only, that's not only dismissive of valid concerns about the messages that he's propagating, but it's like a three-year-old would speak. I agree, and he chooses very simple words, and I actually think that it's kind of a mastermind

just because of the vast majority of people in the United States. They don't necessarily speak at an educated level that would reach maybe Obama in his law school in the advanced degrees, and so he's actually reaching more people, and I think that that's also what played a role in him getting elected, is that, you know, people don't want you to speak over them, they want you to speak to them. And so he keeps it very basic. And, of course, this is extraordinarily basic, but it's also not substantive, saying, oh, I think it's very nice. Like, that has no, even if it's just a very basic language choice, it has no substance to address what he was asked in terms of the gravity of this story and what had happened.

And it doesn't mean anything. And also, you know, it's very convenient. to weaponize anger. If he and his administration were to address this possible terrorist, you know, incident that could have happened, then that would cause his base to think a little bit. Oh, well, absolutely. It would cause his base to consider a little bit of nuance and gray area. And that's-that terrorist aren't only brown. Exactly. And that's why he's avoiding this situation because he's created this whole thought that terrorists are only brown people or they're coming from other countries and the threat isn't white men. And by virtue of this story, in this situation, he would have to acknowledge that that's not true.

Exactly. Yeah, and I think we should be thankful. Whenever this sort of terrorist is stopped, we should be thankful considering all of the work that Donald Trump and his administration has done to shut down areas of the FBI that are investigating right-wing domestic terror plots and cells and all of that. White supremacists, those sorts of groups, like they have deliberately moved resources from that to other areas. So, you know, we're lucky when they actually get one of these.

And there has been multiple cases over the past few years. I want to move to other parts of his administration being questioned on this. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked again about the way he talks, and we'll see if she responds in a serious fashion. A white nationalist, he was planning a plot against Democrats, against journalists. The president has tweeted that journalists, the media, they're the enemy of the people. Is there any plans for the president to maybe tone down his rhetoric? And do you think this contributes to these sorts of extremists getting these ideas?

I certainly don't think that the president at any point has done anything but condemn violence against journalists or anyone else. In fact, every single time something like this happens, the president is typically one of the first people to condemn the violence. And the media is the first people to blame the president. Every time it comes up, we have been consistent and repeatedly said that we condemn violence in all, Yeah, we condemn violence from all the very fine people on both sides. They're very consistent when they respond to this stuff. And I just have to say, aren't you just tired at this point of having to rebut stupid arguments like that?

Like, yes, he's universally against violence when he told people at his rallies to punch people in the face that they protest. He's universally against violence against people in the media when he was talking about Greg Gianforte, body slammy reporter, and he did this motion, yeah, he really doesn't like violence against the media. Yeah, it's really kind of amazing how people can say this with a straight face, given all that Trump has done, like they found that he had sent more than 1,300 tweets attacking the media, and then for individuals and Americans to plot attacks against the media that

are physically going to harm them, it's kind of like, well, why do you think that they're doing that? Yeah. You know, they're being incited. And I also don't think people truly appreciate how dangerous this constant disregard for the truth really is. People seem to think that, okay, let's say Trump's gone in 2020. The precedent he said isn't going anywhere.

He has created a vacuum of wide open for people who have no consideration and no regard for the law to take power and want power. And so this base of people who he's just continuously talking to, they're going to keep getting fed the same nonsense for years and years and years and years from today onward. And so, you know, we're going to have to keep. deal with this and that's why right now it's really time to fight and fight hard, because they're not gonna stop. Yeah, and looking at the media, they seem to, so far, have learned little from the experience

of dealing with Donald Trump. But I guarantee that there are a lot of politicians out there, crazy, whack job, right-wingers, some of which might be working their way up the ranks, some of which haven't started yet. And they've been watching Donald Trump, and they've been learning from him. And they will be running campaigns based on the experience of what Donald Trump has taught them. Because there's a market for it. Absolutely. That's right.

Yeah. And one other thing I want to say, I appreciate, I apologize, I don't know who the reporter was that was asking that question. And I appreciate that she was doing so, that she was bringing it up. And I know that they're worried that they're gonna get thrown out because there's less, there's almost about as little of respect inside of the White House for journalists there is amongst these domestic terrorists. But I am sick of the, will Donald Trump tone down his rhetoric?

I don't want Donald Trump to tone down his rhetoric. I want him to stop deliberately antagonizing people to acts of violence against opposition figures in politics and media. I want him to stop deliberately using the term enemy of the people that he knows is going to get more people killed. I say more because we've already had people in the media killed. We've already had Cesar Syrac, specifically trying to murder people in media and in politics, and you have this guy as well.

At a certain point, it's not an open debate about, is it really smart to use that term or Or should you maybe like finesse it a little bit? No, he knows the concerns. He knows that people that work at CNN and MSNBC have to fear for their lives every day that they go to work now. He knows that Maxine Waters has to have extra security because he's worried someone is going to try to follow through on the voicemail that was left on her, her voicemail machine, saying that they wanted to hang her somewhere.

He knows what he's doing. And I wish that reporters would be willing to be more aggressive in this area as they are in certain policy-based areas where they sort of have more cover. They don't have to worry about seeming aggressive. He's instigating violence. That's what he's doing. He's doing intentionally, and I want them to say it. Now, there's another area of this as well.

Fox News has covered the Coast Guard terrorist, at least to some extent, but not necessarily in a particularly serious fashion either. So Laura Ingram was talking about it recently. And look at what her take on this extremely serious threat that was thankfully averted actually was. Now that Small its anti-Trump drama has blown up, the media has jumped on the story of that Wackjob Coast Guard Lieutenant who wanted to murder Democrat politicians. This is so predictable.

It's almost boring. Yeah, they're really bored by it. Yeah, talking about a terrorist who was thankfully stopped from killing people, they're jumping on it. And note there, and it's in much more of the video. I don't know how much more of it will be able to see, but he is a whack job. He has mental health problems. Exactly, and it's essentially code for he's a lone wolf.

It's not his fault. Or it's just like, oh, this is an isolated case. This is just someone who's not mentally healthy. It's a scapegoat instead of saying, no, we have people out there who are listening to the president and they're being antagonized and they want to carry out the things the president is urging them to do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that he said in his writings

and how Donald Trump and Fox News have been talking in very similar terms about this. But before that, let's go to a bit of a mashup that Media Matters put together of how various hosts on Fox News in the lead up to the events of this week have been talking about some of the legal challenges to Donald Trump at his presidency. We are now witnessing a deep state coup. I'll explain in detail. There's no doubt any longer. We were mocked, Laura, for saying this for all this time that there is this soft coup against Donald Trump. They're plotting basically what amounts to a political coup. You heard it right. They're trying to undermine our democracy and create a constitutional crisis.

This is about a full-on assault by the left, the Democratic Party, to absolutely carry out a coup d'etat. This doesn't appear to be a witch hunt. It appears to be a silent coup. They so hate this president and the American people. The FBI agents that tried to undermine Trump in this soft coup. What is happening here is a coup d'etat, what I call a soft coup. A silent coup to get him out of office. By the way, if it were happening in a less devout. country, we know exactly what to call it. It's an attempted coup. If that's true, we have a coup on our hands. This is an attempted coup d'etat to get rid of the duly elected president

of the United States. We're going to lose the countries. They want to subvert his administration. They would love to carry out an actual coup to talk. Okay, so let's take a look at just a little bit of the writings of this guy. I don't generally like to do that. I want to provide propaganda for them, but I think it's important here in understanding what's going on. So one In one section, he did a series of searches on his computer, which we know about. And here's a section. He had a hot couple of hours here. What if Trump illegally impeached?

Best place in D.C. to see Congress people. I guess he just wanted to visit his representatives. Where in D.C. to Congress live. Civil war, if Trump impeached, Social Democrats, USA. Democratic Socialist, buddy, get the terminology right. So there, he's worried about him being illegally impeached, although, of course, he's. impeachment is a part of the system, it's not illegal, he's worried about coups, he's worried about starting a civil war.

Like, he's using the same exact terminology that has been pumped into his brain, hypothetically, many times per day, stretching back a couple of years now. Whether it's stuff like this or constant rhetoric of so-and-so hates America, you hate America, you hate America, you hate America, all they have left is fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, to a generation of people who aren't really holding the reins to society. anymore. More so, they're keeping us from getting the policies that we need, and they're keeping us from having the world as open, or our society at least as open as it needs to be. And, you know, it's really amazing when you see mashups like that, because you really understand, like,

you know, the more you hear a message over and over and over again, no matter how ridiculous it is, at some point, it's not going to seem so ridiculous because you've heard it so many times. And so, you know, when people do things like that, you know, social Democrats this, where do these people live? That's encouraged, and it's so obviously encouraged. But, you know, the more chaos, the less, you know, government can function. So it all benefits people who don't have to suffer the consequences anyway. Although it's funny you say that in terms of not having to suffer the consequences

because he was Coast Guard. They just suffered the consequences a month without their pay, if not more, because of how the pay structure was set up. So if anything, this man was directly hit by this financially of Trump's holdout, And yet he still is trying to execute Trump's plans. It's wild. Right. Yeah, cult of personality is a powerful thing.

And one thing that I want to, I just want to double down on this is that this guy, according to his writings, he was a white supremacist for 30 plus years. So he's been radicalized a long time ago. And, you know, if we were to check in with this deranged mind every few years back and see who he hated, it's possible that it fluctuates from time to time. But the fact that he's worried about like social Democrats right now and Blumenthal and Waters and Joe Scarborough, that's not like, that's not the way it had to go. But there are people like that. There are crazy people with 15 high power to assault rifles and shotguns and handguns kind of just waiting, waiting to be told who they should hate and who they should fear, as you point out, and who they should target.

And sometimes they send pipe bombs. And sometimes they check where in D.C. to Congress live. And sometimes they think about, you know, where does Supreme Court justices go? And how do I get an extra seat for Donald Trump on the Supreme Court? Like, those people are out there. So hypothetically, Fox News could stop using apocalyptic language to describe a perfectly legal and historically precedented investigation of illegality in the Trump administration. And Trump could stop calling people in the media the enemy of the people.

Do you believe that that is likely to happen? That they're going to stop? In either case. Maybe Tucker Carlson, he likes to be considered a reasonable person. No, I think they're gonna ride the wave until their audience is not here anymore. I mean, because it's not really, if they switched up the rhetoric, they wouldn't be Fox News anymore, and most of their viewers would then stop watching them. So much to the point, I mean, whenever Fox News holds Trump a little bit critical, their viewers

lose their minds like Chris Wallace when he was talking about the national emergency situation. So it's not, you know, they just want to see what they want to see. And when it comes down to the dollar bill, it's really not in their interest to switch up the rhetoric. And really, you know, when you really look at the motivation with this guy, you know, the people who do things like this believe that they're going to spark some type of revolution. They're not just doing it because they think like, oh, I'm going to punish these people and that'll be it. They think that they're going to influence people to rise up and take back what's theirs or whatever it is that they believe. So it's really not just, so simple as people commit in violence is what they think they're doing with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, why don't we take our first break? We come back. We've got a lot more for you. Some rough news. And so we'll talk about. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies.

Bunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational,

aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for you. and FDR in your podcast app today, and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time.

Welcome back to the Power Panel, everybody. Before we jump back into the news, I want to give you an idea of some of the special events that are going to be coming next week. So, first of all, on Monday, big town hall on CNN, they are giving one to Bernie Sanders. I would not have predicted that, but they are. So credit to CNN. So that's Monday, February 25th. We're going to be covering that live here.

That's moderated by Wolf Blitzer. We won't have the conversation or the post game that day. So just a heads up there. And it's going to be similar to the situation with the big football game. I know we can't say the name. You'll need to do side-by-side viewing for this. It's in it won't be interesting. Similar to that game?

No, hopefully it'll be important to that. And Adam Levine will take his shirt off live on set. So you'll watch the town hall on CNN and tune into the Young Turks at t yt.com slash live for our commentary. So that day, five to six will be for everybody. Six to seven will be members only. And you can go to t yt.com slash trial to try a week for free. Once the town hall is done, which we're going to be doing live commentary on, there's

going to be in-depth analysis by myself, Jank Yugar, Anna Kasparian, and Francesca Fiorentini. We're going to have clips from the town hall and provide some analysis for you. We also have big plans for Wednesday. That is the Michael Cohen testimony on the 27th. We're going to be covering that live. That's the oversight committee. It's going to start at 7 a.m. Pacific time, and we plan to cover it until it's over. It could go eight or nine hours.

The first portion will be for everyone. It will carry the second part of our coverage for members. But again, t.com slash trial to get started on a free work week with that. So big stuff coming up next week. If I could also plug for my own show, The Damage Report. We've got two of Bernie Sanders newly announced campaign co-chairs on the show next week. On Monday, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's is going to be talking to us about Bernie's candidacy. And on Thursday, Senator Nina Turner is going to be joining us as well.

So big plans on the damage report next week as well. And we turn now to sad news. A transgender woman named Camilla Diaz Cordova died this month in her native country of El Salvador. months after she was deported from the United States. So the woman was 31 years old and had joined one of the migrant caravans heading from Central America to the U.S. last year to escape violent threats. Monica Linares, the director of a Salvadoran trans advocacy group, told NBC News.

Linares, who said she has known Diaz Cordova for 10 years, stated that the threats were frequent and dated back to at least 2014 when Diaz Cordova first filed a report with El Salvador's national civil police. Diaz Cordova had apparently petitioned for asylum while in the U.S., but was deported back to El Salvador four to five months ago. And we can show you one of the court filings she had about the violent threats that she had faced in El Salvador back in 2014. Her friend Virginia reported her missing in late January, and on January 31st, that transadvocacy

group discovered that she had been admitted to a hospital in San Salvador and died on February 3rd. We don't know what happened to her. I mean, she was attacked, obviously. It happens all the time in El Salvador, as well as every other country on the planet. But we do know that it didn't have to happen, because she could still be in the U.S. She came here fleeing violent threats, and she was turned back and sent back exactly where she'd been fleeing from. And this is what happened.

I think one of the biggest implications of this is the just complete, you know, disregard America has for the destabilization that exists in many parts of the world. Much of the destabilization that exists in Central America is a direct result of our drug policies. And when it comes to law enforcement, one of the biggest things

should be, at least, how are we going to be effective? And relations get damaged when things like this happen. How are we going to work with other countries to help solve violence, whether it be from drugs or whether it be from homophobic issues such as this, if we're

just throwing people back into their country with no safety, with no protection, willy-nilly, you know, constantly, you know, talking, you know, like Mexicans are rapists and they're coming to kill you and things like that that just really don't fare well for our forum, you know, relations with people. So, you know, things like this have longer negative effects than just what happened that time. So it's just really sad that, and two, so many people will see this and they'll be like, oh, she's a transgender, who cares? Yeah, and that's the exact reason why she was murdered. You know, this is a complete and total travesty, and our system failed her.

She came here seeking asylum, and she had a legitimate reason. The United Nations had ordered an investigation to be done in El Salvador. After what? We had seven trans women that were killed in five months. These women were being hunted and murdered needlessly, and she came to our country seeking asylum and help, and we turned her away and sent her back. It's things like this that really speak to our lack of humanity. And the fact that we are not upholding the laws as we pretend that we should or we purport

them to be. And it's just, it's a travesty, but also it speaks to the fact that trans women, especially trans women of color, are continually murdered and hurt and no one is standing up or stepping up for them. Yeah, she was the second in El Salvador this month. There was a trans woman who used the name Lolita who was killed with a machete on February 8th. There's been attempts to quantify the amount of violence and supposedly considered by activists a low count.

But over the past decade, 3,000 transgender people have been murdered worldwide, generally by shooting, stabbing, or beating. And we don't necessarily know it could be far, far higher. And so this is an issue obviously of violence against this community in particular. It's also an issue of the sort of obvious consequences of our immigration policy. But just in this individual case, like I think about what she went through, that she probably thought for years about leaving to flee this. Then she did.

And that was an unimaginable struggle to go potentially hundreds, thousands of miles, potentially being victimized every step of the way, facing the threat of death on that path, thinking you're not possibly going to get to the US. But then you do, and you get in here, and then we send you back. Like we don't have room, like we don't have resources, like we could not have protected her. Well, like she's not a person. Exactly. And that's the problem is that our world is not seeing trans women and transgender people

as people and showing some humanity. It's just, it is so upsetting, especially the women of color. And what we had, I think it was in 2017, 29 transgender killed and murdered. These are hate crimes. You know, it's just. And also, it's, I mean, when you think about, in the U.S., trans people, trans issues barely talked about. Yes.

When they're talked about, it's generally Republican politicians attempting to take away some of the few rights that they actually have. And the narrative that is used to get you to be afraid of this community is they're going to come in your bathroom and they're going to prey on you and your kids. When they're the prey to some of the sickest, violent people in our culture. How twisted it is, that's how they choose to talk about. And how blown out of proportion people's fears on that group will be, like they'll act like, they act like homosexuality is like the rhinovirus or something, like you're going to catch it.

Well, yes, but trans is not equated with homosexuality. And that's also something that is very much, I believe, to be a frustration of the trans community because it's this thought that, oh, it's a sexual thing as opposed to no, it is my identity and my gender. And all I am doing is adhering to that and I have an entitlement to live in accordance with my being and who I am and for people to sexualize that and also sexualize your essence of your very being. I have spoken at length with my transgender friends and just the fact that just them existing in any space, they are sexualized. And as a black woman where I am hypersexualized in my own being, I can understand that. But to the extent to which they are is just it is beyond words.

beyond bounds, and they are murdered for it. I'm glad you provided that context as well, you know, just because it's not always about sexuality at all. And the thing is, too, is because they don't have such a voice in terms of educating people, because, unfortunately, this narrative has been created that it's a sexual thing. It has nothing to do with sex. And, you know, and the fact that our society equates gender with sex, it's just a way that they can weaponize issues and use it against us, much like you said with in terms of

the restrooms and, oh, they're going to do something dirty to you. When we all know, based on the studies and statistics, that generally our threat is not coming from anyone, transgender, or even people of color at times do. Yeah. And it's a very unexpected miracle that we're hearing about this story at all. So thank you to the organization, ASPIDH, for publicizing this. Because, I mean, what are the chances that of all of the people that we deport, that we will know what ends up happening to them if they're the victims of crime or murdered?

or if they're not murdered, and they never lived to the potential that they could have achieved if we had given them a chance, thus strengthening both their lives and our country. But we won't know about those just by the very nature of it. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to other news. The Cook County Board has voted to eliminate their county's gang database this week. Over the years, it had accumulated 25,000 plus names. Many of those, not gang members, they have no place on that list.

But thankfully, activists have been fighting against it and it will be eliminated. The sheriff's office will be prohibited from using or sharing its regional gang intelligence database and required to ultimately destroy it. The new law will also ban the sheriff's office from feeding information into any other gang database maintained by outside agencies. And within 90 days, county officials will be required to hold a public hearing on how the regional gang database has been used. So there had been debates about going farther in this.

They had talked about having the sheriff mail everyone whose name had been on the list to know, to let them know. But there was concerns about that. Yeah, what? Citizens would be informed by the vote to the police. And I guess. And you had been targeted for reasons that were unjust? Okay.

Exactly. So I want all of your commentary on that, but first I want to give you an idea of how ridiculous this is. So let's see, there's, there was 25,000 names on this list. This is being destroyed, many others across the country being maintained, including. including Chicago, which has one with a hundred and twenty eight thousand people on it. State police have one with 90,000 names on it. And to give you an idea of how ridiculous the errors are on this.

So there's one individual who was in his early thirties and was identified as a member of the Black Pea Stones. That was 34 years ago. And that's 77 year old man is still on that list. There are two people on Chicago's list that are listed as being 100,000. 32 years old. Awesome. So I guess, you know, once you go gang, you'd never leave.

No. Can't go back. Yeah. So these are obviously not just naturally rife with errors in terms of how police will interpret your presence on this, but that the people in it aren't even in gangs in the first place in many cases seems ridiculous. And you know what? I'm actually surprised that the black-eyed peas aren't on that list.

You know, the way they're just throwing that stuff around. It's so disheartening, you know, the way that they weaponize things that are supposed legitimate government resources to target people of color. And the fact that they're now just getting rid of this, but also that so many states and larger entities have these lists and like to target these people unjustly and also not even letting them know. Yeah. And really, you know, a reflection of how our justice system is geared toward punishment

and not rehabilitation. And also how lazy people can really be. How do you have people listed on here that are 132 years old? I don't know of anyone that's that old in the world right now. And just in general, like, how big of a threat is a 77-year-old man? He's got experience. Exactly, he can lead the way of something. But just in general, again, you know, like, when we have people who go to prison and come back,

and once you, it's a revolving door, once you leave prison, it's so easy to go back because it's so hard to participate in society. No one will hire you. People look at you like, you know, people won't forgive you for what you. what you may or may not have done without the understanding that many people commit crimes because they're desperate or because their upbringings are tough. And they have been around influences that that's all that makes sense to them. That's the only thing that they know.

And so again, the biggest thing, is it working? No. Not if people are continuously going back to jail. We have the largest concentration of people in prison out of any country on the planet. You know, and again, just to show a list of, what'd you say, 129,000 people in Chicago. Chicago or something like that, like, but what's actually coming from it? Is violence going down? Like, it's just a bunch of names and a bunch of processes that don't actually help anything.

And again, like, it's just a big office full of people who aren't really doing any good work. No, no, and you're absolutely right. In terms of society is not addressing the lack of legitimate options for the reason why people turn to crime. But then on top of that, when you have a system that continues to make money off of criminality, but even, you know, we have a lot of, you know, false convictions or all these other things going on. then the incentive really is to punish and continuing to have this list with all these names where people are very old

or maybe even dead, it just continues to further that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you were talking about being around a bad influence. In many cases, apparently, being around that bad influence is all that it takes. Like, if your uncle is in a gang, then you're a threat. You can get out of this list.

Not if you're in the gang, too. Just if you're around it. And I guess this would defer from department to department, but I would love to see how they're defining gang here. Yes, yes, yes. What's a gang and what's not a gang? I think that there's some connotations to that.

Absolutely, absolutely. Just profiling straight up 100%. There's probably a melanin count that's required. Probably so. Okay, we're going to take our second break. We come back, more news. 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 our data.

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Welcome by the show, everyone. Before we jump back in the news, I did want to thank a couple of our members. So Jorge Bustamante and Melissa Oberg, thank you for being TYT members. We appreciate you doing that and letting us have a show in the first place, which is nice because I have no other monetizable skills. So thank you. I wouldn't make it out there, people. Keep being members. We have some members comments. Gabby Marita says the Trump administration seems to operate on a policy of spite and vindictiveness distilled into a political ideology. I don't know if I would give it as like as bold and fancy term as a political ideology, but it is like a morass of hatred and fear and it does target different people at different times. Eric Housseau, I think referencing the story about the trans woman in El Salvador, we have a history of doing this. Remember the German Jews we sent back to Hitler. Thank you. That is true.

Let's see. Aimee Papito tweeted in at hashtag TYTLive saying now whenever a trans individual or a colored member of the LGBT community gets attacked or killed, there will be doubt thanks to Jussie Smollett. Yep. I think there would have been quite a bit of doubt. Anyway. Or lack of interest regardless, but I get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.

And let's see. Tenon Kosal says you can't get right wingers to care about what happens in other countries. They'll call you a globalist to them, whatever happens across the border. overseas doesn't affect us as if Europe and Mexico or El Salvador or on a different planet. Unless it saves taxes, then it's fine. I do love that globalist is like the thought that it's a bad thing. I mean, it has connotations in modern right-wing communications, that's for sure. And let's see.

Anna Kopej says, how dangerous can a 77-year-old man be? I don't know, but Bernie scares the hell out of an awful lot of people. I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking of Bernie, yeah. No, that is a good one. Okay, so with that, why don't we jump in? We have a couple more stories for you. Governor Andrew Cuomo has interesting ideas about how he'd rank the worst tragedies to hit New York during his life.

So he was talking about Amazon deciding not to set up their next headquarters, thanks to grassroots activism against it. And he said, what happened is the greatest tragedy that I have seen since I have been in government. And I know that there's got to be a worst one, but I just can't think of anything. So what do you guys think? Is there anything worse that's happened in New York in the past couple decades? Well, my thought is how does he define being in government? Because maybe he has a different definition that has nothing to do with the September date. Maybe. He's a Cuomo, though. So I'm going to count most of his adult life.

The second biggest recession in American history also happened relatively recently. Yep. Could have been, yeah, yeah. There have been, you know, terror scares. There's been, you know, you had the Great Recession. You had Hurricane Sandy. You had, I mean, the subway system, take a ride, that's a pretty big tragedy. Someone on Twitter pointed out pizza rat, that was an embarrassment. There's been a lot of issues in New York. So how tone-deaf do you need to be to imply that one company deciding not to go there, which, yes, would probably bring certain economic benefits. But also there were valid concerns that it would drive people out of housing that is already virtually impossible. I mean, you'd have so many problems.

And they're not even being acknowledged. And that's what's so, like, they want to pretend that it's just AOC's in D.C. And she complains about it. And so it didn't happen. But that's not the case. There were grassroots activists inside of New York who were saying, we have already been fighting exactly the sort of economic exploitation that comes as a result of massive corporations like this.

And so, yeah, to not even acknowledge the arguments on the other side is, that's disheartening. Yeah, and also just to see the fact that, oh, a loss of whatever income would have been generated, even though, you know, just because of Amazon and their tax structure, how much the New York revenue really could have been generated there for them, it's still one of those things of Amazon would have changed the characteristics of that community. And to be able to hold on to that, especially when we see mass gentrification or re-gentrification and these changes that are made and how they change the entire landscape. And they do displace people in their homes. And I believe that those New Yorkers had a right to say, we'll pass, thanks. Go elsewhere. That's perfectly fine.

Find a place where they welcome you and they want you because it's not there. And, you know, for those 25,000 jobs, who would those jobs have been for? Those jobs would have been high skilled, high position jobs that, like how you said, would have further gentrified the area. And also, you know, he made comments that said, like, you know, the state legislatures who were against this move have to now worry about their next election. And it's just like, you know, why are you really so mad? It's definitely not a reflection of everyday regular average people and the opportunities

they would have missed out. It has to do with really, really rich people being upset. Full stop, the end. And you know, for you to be wanting and complaining, it just shows a reflection of who you serve and who you don't serve. Because he would have stood to benefit, I'm sure. Exactly. Yeah, financial capacity.

He would have stepped on this and be like, no, we're not doing this. And in regards to Amazon, for the second year in a row, paying $0 in federal income tax, it's like, how does that even happen? $3 billion in subsidies to move to this area that's only going to drive people out of it. So, you know, who's really loose? Amazon didn't even take a loss. Thank you. They didn't even take a loss.

They don't seem to care that much. They didn't. They basically saw, oh, we can't do this exactly how we want to do it, so buy. Yeah. Can you imagine the things that they were doing in anticipation of the thought that Amazon would be there? the deals, maybe Cuomo was probably setting up or the opportunities, you know, because we'd have more residential housing or setting up this condo here, or maybe you can do this with the land structure.

And it's kind of like, yeah, messed up his pocket now that Amazon's not there. But did it really do anything for the people, even if Amazon would have been there? Yeah. And I think about, like, look, this is, it would require more investigation. The deal didn't even go through. So I'm not implying direct financial transactions. But a couple of weeks ago, Representative Accio Cortez, was doing this game, this corruption game that went viral, talking about all of the ways that

it's extremely easy to provide benefits not only for your political donors, but also for yourself. And take a look at this situation. I mean, hypothetically, he gets to take billions of dollars and give it to a corporation, and they in turn can give him money for his next election. That wasn't his money, those billions of dollars. And it wasn't some hypothetical thing. It was concrete money being transferred to an individual corporation. So there was certainly a political corruption and money and politics element to this.

And more importantly than just this one company with this one headquarters and this one city, I feel do we want to live in a country where big corporations get to pit every city against each other to see how much we're willing to flagellate ourselves to get them to come? And how much of our resources are we to give? How many decades of tax-free status are we going to provide? Like, I like to think that these areas, they have something to offer, that the company should want to go there. They shouldn't have to be paid off in this way.

And I think that if we can derail a few of these deals, maybe we can start to change that process. And it's funny that you bring that up in part because that's exactly what happens in sports. We see that with Olympic committees, but also with teams when they're moving to cities. Well, what can you offer me? And it's never to the benefit of the people. And we kind of saw that when the Rams left St. Louis. and pretty much the debt that they put them in.

And I do have someone from St. Louis next to me, and he may chime in. But it is one of those things where it's not for the benefit of the people. If anything, it's to their detriment at the end of the day. And that really, you know, St. Louis doesn't have a particularly thriving economy for entertainment. And so I remember when the Rams left St. Louis, I called up everybody. I was like, I was already planning to move, but I was like, I got to go. And it's because how much economic activity you took away from the city just so you could go to a place and make more money, which again makes business sense. But again, like, there's no incentive for them to come anywhere and actually help out people in those communities.

Now we just have an empty stadium in St. Louis. And that, you know, even less people are going to come to the city now because, you know, what else is there to go see? Maybe the Cardinals, but other than that, people aren't going there. So, you know, they brought the team to L.A. Makes sense business-wise, but L.A. didn't need that. You know what I'm saying? And then, and then not only that, they left St. Louis, came to L.A. and just were in the Super Bowl. So, you know. I'm sorry, I started that. I'm sorry, I, my bad. Let's talk about the Super Bowl. No. So we're not going to do that. But, yeah, and I think,

like, if you want to attract companies to come, like, okay, do something about the price of housing in your area. Do something about the public transportation. Make it appealing in non-pay off terms for them to be there. And maybe if you do that, and if maybe we listen to some of the Democratic socials who want workers to have more control over the fates of their companies, maybe it would be better to not have just one to nine people choosing where Amazon is going to put their next thing, where they can just look at a number on a line and say, we're going to be paid $3 billion, so we're going

to go there. Have the workers, the people who are actually going to be working in that location, have some input as well. Would that really be such a bad thing either for New York or for Amazon? I don't think so. It'd be great for long-term gain. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're actually providing value for the regular people of that place, then you're boosting the economy. You know, like you're actually providing the value that you're supposed to be. Whereas if you're just focused, so much of American business culture is focused on short-term gain. How can we make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time? And that usually ends up in disaster. Because

usually you have to do, you know, basically criminal activity that's legal in order to do it. So, you know, it's just a reflection of the culture that we live in. Oh, completely unethical. Yeah. Yeah. The whole national conversation we're having right now is so bizarre that, like he can just offer, yeah, we're gonna give you billions of dollars and hopefully that'll provide some jobs.

When people are like, hey, maybe we could like, we could tax like the wealthy to provide jobs to go and fill the degree. That doesn't make sense. But you're giving our tax dollars to a corporation, that doesn't make any sense. sense. Anyway. Okay, thankfully we have high-profile politicians who are starting to question some of this orthodoxy. That is a good thing. Hopefully it will continue. And with that, why don't we turn to some more political corruption, this time in the even more obvious category. The telecom industry is going to be hosting a fundraiser for Senator Roger Wicker. He is a Republican,

and next week he's going to have that. That is the night before he is going to be presiding over a hearing on data privacy that will impact the futures of many of the companies involved in exactly that fundraiser. So he's the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. He's going to have a Tuesday fundraiser at the Capitol Grill Restaurant. Sounds lovely. The event is being hosted by the political action committees for AT&T and the trade group U.S. Telecom.

According to the invitation, which would be supporting a group backing Wickers' re-election, it would cost $1,500 to attend the event as a guest, $2,500 to attend as a sponsor, and $5,000 to co-host. And even if you don't think that he is going to be influential, by this sudden influx of campaign funds to him, by exactly the people who are going to be coming in and testifying at this hearing, they're going to have his ear at the fundraiser, they're going to be sitting at the table with him. Like, concerned citizens that care about data privacy rights, they're not going to be there unless they can put him $1,500. I mean, what is it? Most people can't afford a thousand dollar hit. So you definitely not going to put up $1,500 to go to some event filled with people that you don't know, don't work with, have nothing to do with. And I mean, if it's not for corruption, if it's not like, hey, let me slide you this so that, you know, don't, don't hold me accountable.

What's it for? What other logical reason could you possibly come up with that makes any sense whatsoever that this is for other than, hey, don't hold us accountable? Yeah. Can you think of one? I mean, I like playing devil's advocate as much of the next guy, but it's difficult. It's just so brazen and in our face at this point. And that's not going anywhere, like how we talked about before. Yeah, yeah, and that's why I don't want to harp constantly on AOC's recent Oversight

Committee hearing where she was describing what you were legally allowed to get away with. But the reason it was so powerful, the reason it went viral is because to the an average person, none of this makes any sense whatsoever that I can buy a ton of stock in AT&T and they can give me a bunch of money to run for Congress, I can get elected, then I can deregulate their industry, the stock price goes up, by the way, I can still own the stock. I'm not barred from doing that. And so I make money and they make money after paying me money to be there to do it. And there's no laws broken whatsoever. That doesn't make sense to anyone who is not being paid huge sums of money on one side of this equation

or another. And I like it to you how we continue to push this narrative that people in other countries and governments in other countries are run on bribery and they do all this illicit stuff. But thank God we have the democracy we have in the United States and that everything is Okay. And how ironic that only the super wealthy can even participate in that game. No one else has a slightest chance. Unless, you know, I mean, you know, we see people like Bernie breaking records for raising money from small donors. That's true.

That's few and far in between. I mean, like, that's one man. And we still have to see what happens with the whole campaign. Yeah. So, you know, it's like, like you said, like if you got the money, you can rig the game. That's right. Yeah. And I feel like all, like you reference like political corruption of this sort, the sort of everyday

political corruption that happens at other countries, like, they should do it at the Capitol Grill. That would be smarter because then it would seem legit. Do it with shrimp cocktail near you. That's how you have to do it. By the way, not for nothing, but between 2013 and 2018, Senator Wicker received $227,000 from the telecom services industry. Man.

That's a lot of money. And you see- It's possible that changes your opinion just a little bit. And we see numbers like that frequently, and it's like we're so, we've become like, it's nothing now. In other countries, people lose their minds because people are getting $5,000 or $4,000 or $20. And over time, these people are raising millions of dollars. And it's like, who can compete with that? You know, so it's just, it's just, well, I have yet to be out of the country, but people who leave the country, it's interesting when they talk about, you know, only when you go to countries like Sweden or.

or, you know, any of those Nordic countries, whatever it may be, and you really see, like, yo, we should have a lot more access to things than we do. Yeah. Considering that it's like America's number one, and we're the wealthiest nation ever in history, it's like, well, who's seeing that wealth? Yeah. You know, so at this point, people aren't buying it anymore, and they better stop playing around because the people ain't playing around no more.

Yeah. Yeah, we accepted that they would get an ever-increasing share of national wealth. in exchange for reality TV and fast food, but only for so long, and now we want more. And now there's no more for them to take. Exactly, exactly. So look, I was hoping that we would have a couple of minutes, because I was hoping to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about the reason you heard, Politiscope. Well, Politiscope, me and my best friend Walt, he was on the damage report yesterday.

You can check that for reference. It's a nonpartisan player profile lab for politicians. We break down legislation, and you can see how your elected officials have voted for and against each policy. There's currently way too much media content for everybody to really be informed a good time. So we do a good job organizing that. So if you want to learn about tax issues, if you want to learn about economics, environmental issues, whether you want to read the articles or videos, it's all nicely organized, build a portfolio off of that. And ultimately, we're just trying to make it easier to stay informed with politics. And the more informed you are, the more

involved you can then be. It's difficult to know who you're supporting if you don't understand understand what types of policies they're pushing. And so our goal is to be objective and focus on policy so that no matter if you have left views or right views, you can just hold our elected officials a bit more accountable. So it's been going really well. Check that out. We're available on iPhone and Android. Politoscope, download it today.

And I think that you know that you're onto something when your app is received well by people on the spectrum between me and Stuart Varney on Fox members, both fans of it. Yeah, exactly. So I think especially with the election that we're entering into, an app like that, very important. I love that you can get notifications, you can follow particular bills, particular politicians, see what they're up to, either because you really like a politician, you want to know what they're putting forward, or if you're, like, Steve King, like, you're terrified of what a politician might do, you can also get notifications every time they make a move.

That's something that I certainly think we could use. So thank you to both of you for joining me. Good to have this talk. We're going to have an awesome second hour for you as well. On the other side of this break, seeing if just a few. 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. At apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.