The Young Turks - Trump Blames Ukraine

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

U.S. & Russia Agree To Work Together On Ending Ukraine War. Social Security Head Leaves Amid Dispute With Doge Over Data. Steve Bannon Calls Elon Musk A “Parasitic Illegal Immigrant.” White House Sends Conflicting Messages About Elon’s Role. RFK Jr. Announces Plan To Assess “Threat” Of Antidepressants. Hosts: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. There are some problems here. Sorry, big time. I'm so upset. Oh my God. Begha! I love the young church jank you for Anna Kasparing with you guys. We do an amazing show for you guys, you crazy dog.

So A, we have a lot of strange conversations and debates in American politics these days. It's not as strange if you've been watching the actors, you know that these schisms and disagreements are abound in the Republican Party and in the right wing. But Tucker Carlson versus Barry Weiss, the Bannon versus Elon Musk, Megan Kelly versus conservative women. That's all in the show today. So and that's just one day. So fascinating stuff, but also some foreign policy as well. So Casper, What are we starting with?

I actually want to start with that foreign policy because, you know, in this, you know, pattern or trend of conflicts, looks like there's a little bit of Trump administration versus Vladimir Zelensky. So let's get into it. President Donald Trump met with Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Saudi Arabia today, much to the chagrin of the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, who very much wants to be part of peace negotiations in order to end the ongoing war in Ukraine. Now, I'm going to get to what Trump and Putin are allegedly working toward outside of a potential peace

agreement with Ukraine. But before I get to that, I do think it's important to really hyper-focus on some of what Donald Trump had to say, which really does have Vladimir Zelensky furious with the Trump administration, feeling alienated and abandoned by America. Our European allies are also very much concerned about some of these statements. But apparently Trump said or implied that the war is partly Ukraine's fault. He said this, and I'm quoting verbatim, you should have never started it, Trump said, of Ukraine while criticizing President Vladimir Zelensky, who had expressed concern that his country was not included in talks between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia. Trump continues by saying, I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's

going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited, essentially referring to Vladimir Zelensky. And then he continues, well, you've been there for three years, Trump told reporters at Marlago. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. Trump also went on to argue that he could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land that's now essentially, you know, at the heart of this conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And he continues to say everything, almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished. And not one dome would have been knocked down, but they chose not to do it that way. Now, if you can recall early on in this

war, which began in February of 2022, the then prime minister of UK, Boris Johnson, had met with Vladimir Zelensky essentially discouraging him from engaging in peace talks. And, you know, the reason for that is that the West wanted to essentially have Russia expend their military capability essentially bleed out their military capability through the course of this war. But there has been a price to pay for Ukrainians, of course, in having this war drag on. And in the beginning, Vladimir Putin was under the assumption that this was an easy war to win. It was not easy. In the very beginning, he was having a lot of difficulty. His military was having a lot of difficulty. And so he was in more of a position to agree to peace talks back

then. But as the war kind of heated up and Russia was able to secure more and more territory in Ukraine, he was less incentivized to engage in peace negotiations. Now Donald Trump is involved and it's clear to me that there are certain business negotiations taking place. And I'll give you some more details on that in just a moment, Jank. But first, I wanted to get your thoughts on what he had to say about Ukraine partly being responsible for this war. Yeah. So that's enormously unfair, the people responsible for war, the people who started. And so, and continued it and are more powerful and taking land, et cetera, et cetera. So in this case, there's no question the Russians started it. We've been over this a hundred times on the young Turks. Did Biden

and the U.S. make mistakes that partially that up to the war? I think they did. I think talking about Ukraine being in NATO, further antagonize Russia, et cetera. But at the end, they said that they wouldn't be in NATO and Russia attacked anyway. So not helpful. In the beginning, when Trump first took office, I was slightly encouraged Anna, because he didn't immediately give away the whole deal to the Russians. And it looked like he was actually going to negotiate. And he was going to even threaten them a little bit.

So I know I'm not in the camp of don't talk to Putin by yourself and exclude the Russians. I'm saying the Ukrainians and the Europeans, I don't really care how peace talks start as long as they talk. So there's also some encouraging things because that that has begun. And they come out saying that they're more likely to reach an agreement. But part of the reason they're more likely to reach an agreement is because that initial credit to Trump for seeming a little bit more on bias is now quickly dissipating as he's going around him and his administration saying basically Russia was right about everything. that's not at all helpful to the negotiations. So, and now I'm very worried about the Ukrainians. Yeah, so, okay, so all of this is kind of coming into focus for me.

And so I'm going to take a step back and give you all the broader picture in just a minute. But in regard to the conversations between Donald Trump and Putin and Saudi Arabia, they actually didn't focus the majority of their talks on ending the war in Ukraine. Obviously, that was one of the topics, but it was essentially a way of opening up diplomatic avenues in which additional negotiations and talks centered on a peace deal will take place. So in an interview with the Associated Press after the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three specific goals. That includes restoring staffing at their respective embassies in Washington. Moscow, of course, to create a high level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations, and this is important, economic cooperation. So look, if you're super

Trump deranged, you're immediately going to think about Trump's personal business deals, but I actually think this is more about what his policy goals are in regard to the economy. So earlier this month, I had done a story about how one of Donald Trump's avenues to lower inflation was to encourage Saudi Arabia to increase their oil production. If there's more oil supply, you know, the idea is that's going to bring oil prices down. That's going to translate to lower prices when it comes to goods and services because of, you know, transport and all of that. But Saudi Arabia is like, no, bro, we're not going to do that because the more oil they produce, the cheaper oil is, the more their economy suffers. Now, let's not forget that the ongoing

war in Ukraine has had an impact on inflation. Ukraine is known as the bread bowl of the world. And so when that war started, that's when inflation really started to tick up. And in addition to that, remember, because of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States slapped some pretty significant sanctions against Russia. I think that Donald Trump is now. now seeing Russia as a potential player in his efforts in lowering inflation, essentially remove the sanctions after there's a peace deal at play, have them produce oil. Once you get rid of those sanctions, that oil is more available on the economic global market.

And I think that's what this is really about. I think he is seeing Russia as a tool to lower inflation. So people stop bugging him about the fact that he didn't lower inflation on day one, which was a ridiculous promise to make. That's my read of it. I'm curious what you think. Yeah. So I think that's a really good take on it and accurate. And remember, one of his giant campaign promises was drill baby drill is going to lead to lower prices. Now he's authorized drill baby drill to no end. And it doesn't really matter because Obama and Biden had broken records on how much they allowed drilling anyway.

So it's not like he had that much to add. But that was never going to work. And we've always said that it was never going to work, certainly not related to the price of eggs, and it's not even related to the price of oil in the world market, because we're only one country. Ah-huh, but when you involve Saudi Arabia, the Russians, and all of OPEC, then you can affect the worldwide oil market and bring down gas prices, and then pretend that your drill baby drill policy is what led to it, open up more federal land for your donors to ravage and then not give anything back to the American people on, et cetera, et cetera. So it checks off a lot of boxes for him.

And the only downside is his to probably throw Ukraine under the bus, which I don't think he cares about it at all. I agree, actually, about that. I don't think he cares all that much about Ukraine. I think, look, the fact of the matter is Ukraine doesn't really have much leverage. So Vladimir Zelensky is furious. He's furious for good reason. that he's been kind of blocked out of peace negotiations.

You know, Secretary of St. Marco Rubio argues that is not the case. We're just having initial conversations to reestablish diplomatic ties with Russia. And of course, at the end of the day, Ukraine will be involved in peace negotiations. But nonetheless, unfortunately for Zelensky and Ukraine, they really do need U.S. military support in order to continue with the war. So this is going to pressure Zelensky to come to the table, number one, but also it's going to probably pressure Zelensky to accept a deal that he doesn't like. That's my prediction. I hope I'm wrong about that. But considering which players in this whole equation have the leverage, I think Ukraine is probably going to end up accepting a deal they don't like. Yeah, let me just give last word to a couple of our members on Twitch. So Yeboy 07 said Ukraine is 0.0.8.7 said Ukraine is 0. 0% responsible for this war. I largely agree with that. You know, if anyone was responsible

outside of Russia, I'd put it on more of the Western nations that pushed forward, including the U.S. And I don't know why Biden seemed to signal that a minor incursion would be okay. That was, and it literally might have been that he has dementia. And so I think there's a tiny bit of responsibility. I don't know about you even know about tiny bit, but it some responsibility on the West in America in general, but Ukraine has been the victim throughout in all of this. And no math dragon doubled down on their earlier suggestion, which I really liked when we're discussing this about a week ago, give Ukraine their nukes, at least as a bargaining chip, but that isn't Trump's plan. So if you really wanted to do the right thing here, not just for the

Ukrainians, but for us, for everyone involved, and especially for peace, you would negotiate as hard as possible right now with the Russians. And you'd ask for as good a deal as you can get for the Ukrainians and for us, right? And maybe that deal, not maybe, certainly that deal would not be perfect. And there's a lot that the Ukrainians would really hate about that deal because it would involve a compromise involving land. And that's so fundamentally unfair to the Ukrainians. But that's what a peace negotiation would look like. That's why I like that. member's comment and suggestion because I wouldn't want Ukraine to get their nukes back, but I would want to use it as leverage because it's a rare thing that can create leverage.

Now without that kind of leverage, it looks like Trump is given away the store. I don't know that he even wanted the leverage to be honest, but he's back to, okay, something for us, something for the Russians, Ukrainians in Europe, not so much. Yeah, and look, I'll just, I'll end on this. The way this is playing out for Ukraine really does discourage other nuclear powers from denuclearizing, which Donald Trump claims is one of his policy goals. He claims that he wants to get other countries to, including the United States, by the way, to denuclearize. Now, whether you believe him on wanting to accomplish that goal or not is beside the point.

Let's just assume, for the sake of this conversation, that he's serious about it, that he's sincere. about it. Any country who goes along with a U.S. deal to denuclearize would be crazy considering what has just happened with Ukraine. So we'll see how this all plays out, but obviously we're staying on the story. We'll give you more details as it develops, but that's what we've got for now. move on to some domestic news, starting with this. Elon Musk has got to go. Overnight protests popping up in cities across the country. Where is Congress?

Hundreds demonstrating against President Trump and Elon Musk as they push forward with changes to shrink the size of the federal government. President Trump has directed Elon Musk in the Doge team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration. If you think there's fraud, then why did you fire off? the inspector generals. Well, Michelle King, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, has now officially left her post. She did so over the weekend after clashing with Elon Musk's

Doge. Now this conflict between Doge and Michelle King, who's actually been with the agency since 1994, arose out of the fact that Doge members are attempting to access sensitive government records that the Social Security Administration contains. Now, the Trump administration officials argue that they absolutely need to access this personal and incredibly private data to root out wasteful or erroneous spending at the Social Security Administration. They're concerned about fraud. But it's unclear which data the Musk Associates wanted to access that specifically spurred King's departure. But I want to be clear, when we're talking about the Social Security Administration, we are in fact talking about deeply personal details and information

about Americans. Yes, that includes things like where they live, their bank account information, social security numbers. But more importantly, think about what the social security administration does. People apply if they're disabled to get social security disability benefits, which means that they have comprehensive medical records for those who applied for said benefits also includes records on what people earn and more. And look, this isn't the first time this has happened. This is a story we've been reporting on in regard to other federal government agencies. For instance, the Treasury Department's highest ranking civil servant resigned after refusing to grant Doge access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. And Doge is also seeking

to access IRS data in addition to what they're trying to access. at the Social Security Administration and the Treasury Department. But this issue just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And this is what I want to ask, Jane. I want to know if there are people who support Donald Trump, who acknowledge, yes, you can pursue waste, fraud, and abuse without this process that really does lack transparency, right? without allowing these random people who have been appointed by Elon Musk, who hasn't been elected, who isn't an official government employee, like have them look at all of our private information. I mean, you've got to feel somewhat uncomfortable about that. But, you know, I think there's so much distrust toward our institutions that Trump supporters are just kind of going along with it without really thinking about the ramifications of these random people having access to our private information.

Most people still have binary brain, which is if Doge and Musk and Trump are on our side and they hate the Democrats and the Libs and the thought police and all that stuff, they must be good guys because it's, you know, it's a binary world. It's either zero or one. So we can trust them with all of our private information. No, we can't. We can't trust anybody with that kind of information. And most important, they don't need it at all. So this is the thing I keep coming back to, and I'm really frustrated, the reporters aren't focusing on this, and that no one on the right wing side, the Doge side, et cetera, has any answers for this? Why do you need that information? You already have access to all the budgets. So if you want to see what went wrong in the budgeting, if you want to see where the waste, fraud, and abuse is, you don't need access to people's social security numbers at all.

You don't need access to their bank account information as they want through the IRS and, Social Security and other agencies, you don't need any of this private information about both American citizens and now, and now Elon Musk is talking about, or a reporter at 60 minutes reported something in a way I didn't like. I want that person arrested. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's absolutely nuts.

So by the way, now he will have that person and everybody at 60 minutes all of their private information, their taxes, their bank account information, their social security, if he gets access all these things. What do you need that for? If there's waste, fraud, and abuse, it's in the freaking budget and you have complete access to it. They don't need this information at all unless they're planning to do something nefarious with it. I literally don't know a single good reason why they should have it. If I was going to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, number one, I would love to do that. I wouldn't ask for this information. I would, if they gave me this information, I wouldn't know what to do with it. What are you wasting my time with this for?

We need to actually find the programs that are being spent in the wrong direction. How does having Bob's social security number or, oh, look at that conveniently, all of my competitors' financial information have anything to do with actually cutting waste fraud and abuse. And Amy Klobuchar with a rare good point there, if you're worried about fraud, why did you get rid of the people who's in charge of getting rid of fraud and looking out for fraud, the inspector generals and the abuse and all that? That's literally their job. I mean, at a bare minimum, you might want to talk to them before you get rid of them.

Hey, what did you guys come up with anything? What are you, you know, what are you seeing? What were you working on? I certainly, I would ask that question if it was a Trump person or a Biden person that was an inspector general. And I certainly wouldn't find the inspector generals that are looking at my work, which then gets to the other point that you're referring to, Anna, which is transparency. So now, as we'll talk about it in a different story, Musk is saying, and the government is saying that, no, Musk is not technically not an employee so what and doge is technically not

anything we just made it up even though it is now in charge of the entire government and so you won't be able to get freedom of information requests or any other kind of transparency that you would get from a normal government department so wait a minute wait a minute I thought you guys wanted more transparency now all of a sudden you want to fire any other watchdog anyone who might be looking into what you're asking for, ask for the most private sensitive information the government has, and then say you want no transparency for what you're doing. No, red flag, red flag, red flag, this is a giant problem. And if Elon thinks he's going to do something

monumentally stupid and get away with it, I think he's very wrong. And that will lead to a crash for not just Elon, but for Trump and MAGA and everyone beyond imagination. And then they can get all mad that they want in the deep state and all that stuff. Look, there's so many different things that can go wrong. You miss one social security payment for the American people. And you're going to have rage like you've never seen before. And now this is on the normal end. This is on the normal.

I don't know. I disagree. I totally disagree. Yeah, I just, look, I just think for certain people in the United States of America, regardless of which political party is in charge. If you hit a certain level of wealth, you get away with everything. So I don't think there will ever be consequences for Elon Musk if he does, in fact, disrupt the system to the point where individuals who are entitled to social security benefits

don't get their payments because of how disruptive Elon Musk is, right? Or because of the fact that there's no real method to this madness. Let me just say, look, I don't know what kind of data individuals would need access to in order to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Okay, so I just want to put that aside for a second. But I do have a problem with the lack of transparency. I have a problem with the fact that, you know, when it comes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elon Musk is like, I'm going to be transparent about why we're getting rid of it. I'm going to share the receipts soon. I'm going to share the receipts soon. He's supposed to share the receipts on Valentine's Day. He didn't.

Then he said he was going to share the receipts over the weekend. He didn't. And so, I mean, if he came out and explained, this is why we need access to this information, here's what we're doing, here's how we're doing it methodically to ensure that innocent people who are doing nothing wrong and are entitled to Social Security payments or still getting the payments, he's not doing any of that. He's essentially regurgitating nonsense that people are tweeting to him without facts. checking it. So that doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in what he's doing. And by the way,

there absolutely is waste fraud and abuse, 100%. So I'm not even against what the mission is. I'm against the fact that there's lack of transparency, a guy who is extremely wealthy, has multiple businesses, and those conflicts of interest really do play a role in regard to why it's problematic that he's trying to access this data in the first place. I mean, we're not just talking about social security numbers. We're not just talking about bank account numbers. He's also through the Treasury going to have access to information regarding other businesses, potentially businesses he competes with, nonprofits, things like that. And so there isn't transparency. Just because he's constantly on Twitter tweeting things doesn't mean he's being transparent. Visibility does not

translate to transparency. Transparency is transparency. Tell us why you need this data, how you're going to utilize this data and explain to us what it is exactly that you found so fraudulent about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And if you're going to promise the receipts and not deliver them, obviously that's going to raise a lot of questions. The other thing I'll just say is, Jank, we live in a country where the government is specifically there to serve neoliberal interests, okay? And Elon Musk is a perfect example of that. So the idea that our government eventually is going to punish a guy who's using his position of power. in order to benefit himself, enrich himself, and potentially screw over Americans who are entitled to certain things like social security benefits.

It's just outlandish to me to even believe that at this point. That's how pessimistic I am, that anyone with the kind of wealth that Elon Musk has would ever pay any consequence for bad behavior. Yeah, let me make the case then, because I understand what you're saying. I mean, you're not wrong to have that pessimistic look if you look at what's happened in America until now. And in fact, today I heard that Elon Musk is going to start spending in Democratic primaries. I get a load of this to help corporate Democrats. Gee, I wonder why. I thought he was against the Unip Party.

No. And the minute he starts buying the corporate Democrats, the entire Democratic Party and their leadership will become Elon Musk fans. Because they don't, they have no morals at all. So if you say, well, Jake, that sounds a bit much. that sounds outlandish. No, this already happened. Remember the crypto guys spent tons of money in Democratic primaries all on behalf of corporate Democrats and against populace, against anti-corruption, because it was the whole point of the project was corruption. And the Democratic party was like, we love crypto now. Crypto is awesome. What do you need? We're here to kiss your

ass. So I understand exactly the point you're making. The minute Elon starts spending a dollar in Democratic primaries in favor of the establishment Democrats, they'll say, he lost not so bad, he lost not so bad, right? That's what they'll start saying. So now here's my counterpoint. Look, media now is greatly fragmented. It wasn't before. There's only two sides. In the beginning, there was only one side, Walter Cronkite, period. And it was everybody believed the same things. It was created the same culture, et cetera. Then it became Fox News versus MSNBC slash mainstream media, right and but still only talking points only talking points a lot on both sides then online media starts we happen etc we're now supporting Bernie and progressives and populace

and et cetera starts things start to happen now it's so fragmented the media so now the right wing is getting information from a variety of different sources and so are the left wing okay so now Steve Bannon said three things recently about Elon Musk and he's back to all out war against Elon Musk. He said first, where are the goddamn cuts? I heard about Doge cut, cut, cut, cut, and obviously Bannon wants to cut. And he's like, I haven't seen them cross the Potomac. He's like, I thought you guys were going to do Pentagon cuts. I haven't seen a single cut in the Pentagon. I had barely seen any cuts. And then Elon Musk goes, oh, well, you know, there's $50 million in condoms. Oh, right, and then at the Oval Office, he admits,

yeah, we made that one up. Oops, oops, oops. So where are the cuts? So this is what he said. I want to give you Steve Bannon's statement verbatim. So this was during an interview with Unheard, where he says that Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play act as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions. So in that statement, Bannon was alleging that Elon Musk actually came to the country and overstayed his visa. This is something that Musk denies. I don't care enough to look into it, to be honest with you. But he continues, it's pretty evident the president's using him as an armor piercing shell that's delivering blunt force trauma against the administrative state, Bannon said, in his interview.

But he also described Musk's work as performative and complained that Musk had not focused on the Pentagon. with which Musk's private companies have many contracts. Okay, take it away, Jank. Yeah, so secondly, in a previous statement, Bannon had talked about, you guys talked about cutting Medicaid. No, no, no, no, no, wrong place. He's like tons of real Americans, MAGA voters get Medicaid. Do not cut Medicaid, but they're going to cut Medicaid.

They're going to cut in all of the wrong places. Why? And you're not going to see a single dollar of it. because it's all for corporate tax cuts. You know, I wrote that on social media today, an interesting MAGA reaction. They don't even realize that's the plan. They think that these cuts are actually going to help taxpayers. Whatever cuts have actually happened.

They have access to all of our information. That's mission accomplished. The cuts that haven't really happened and not a dollar from the Pentagon. Okay. So, okay, but where is that money going? It's going to go to all, literally all of it. And it won't be anywhere near enough for new corporate tax cuts for Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley CEO friends who are now all Doge, right? So, and Anna, so our disagreement on whether people will rebel.

Number one, people will rebel in the way that Bannon is talking about because now right wing media, if they get burned and there aren't any real cuts. And all there is is corporate tax cuts, which Bannon and his ilk hate for all of their other problems, they hate that stuff. And if all you get is a noxious stuff, you're already in some trouble. But the real issue, Anna, is he's an out of control vehicle. He's a driverless car that's off the grid. He is going to crash. I guarantee it. All this, oh, he's brilliant.

He knows what he's doing. No, I could, he's reckless, totally utterly reckless. Here, last comment goes to one of our members on TV. By the way, annual subscription gets you two months off. You can join on tyt.com. Durge Rodin, Elon's management strategies to cut everything. Then when the things break, hire fewer people to do more work, which is fine for something as inconsequential as Twitter, but it's devastating to do in the government,

but devastation is the end goal. Yeah, but anarchy for its own sake is absurd and an American people will hate it. My guess is that they're doing all of this to distract you. you while they actually do the robbery. Okay, I get it, you want a flashbang over here so you draw everybody's attention so they won't notice not just the normal robbery of the corporate tax, but whatever else you're planning with the Social Security information, the Treasury information, the IRS information, right? They're planning something there.

They're not getting that information for no reason, and it isn't for cutting. So you try that, Elon, and you're gonna reap the world wind, not for me. but from the American people. But let's see, okay, you think you're so freaking smart. I don't know why he wants that information, but it is dangerous, especially with a person as ridiculously reckless as Elon Musk. Well, it looks like the White House is uncertain of what Elon Musk's role with Doge even is, and they made that argument in court. So I've got that story and more coming up. Don't miss it. All right, back on TYT, Jank, Anna, and Craig Hubbard.

Craig, thanks for hitting that beautiful join button below the video. We appreciate you guys. Casper News. We got to talk about what Elon Musk's actual official role is with the Trump administration, because it looks like the White House doesn't even know. I will create a government efficiency commission task with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government. And Elon, because he's not very busy, has agreed to head that task force.

You say you trust him. Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He's so into it. But I told him do that, then I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. of education. He's going to find the same thing. Then I'm going to go to the military.

Let's check the military. People are calling up from all over the country wanting to do and wanting to help Elon. And also could you mention some of the things that your team has found? As you all just saw from that compilation video, President Donald Trump on multiple occasions has referred to Elon Musk as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency or at the very least making decisions at the organization. But interestingly enough, last night, a White House official told a judge that Elon Musk is not the leader of Doge. And in fact, Musk isn't even an employee of Doge. So what's going on here? The issue of Musk's status at Doge came up during, you know, some court proceedings, thanks to a lawsuit that has been filed by 14 separate

states against Musk, Trump, and Doge. These states that are involved in the suit are claiming that Musk's government role is actually unconstitutional because he has not faced any Senate confirmation hearings. He's not an elected official. They have a big problem with this, and they're taking it up with the federal courts. Now, before I give you more details on how the court proceedings are going so far and the interesting arguments being made by the executive branch, what are your thoughts, Shane? Yeah, if you say you're for transparency in the minute somebody asks you for transparency, you go, no way, you don't get to find out anything I'm doing. I think, oh boy, we got a problem. That's a giant red flag. So if you think, well, of course

the government should have transparency, except for Elon, because Elon is so. rich and he'd like to be richer than Jeff Bezos, and that's why he became the number one donor to Donald Trump so he can control the entire government. And that's why we shouldn't find out what he's doing. You might have missed the point of transparency. So these 14 states that are challenging Musk's role, referring to it as unconstitutional, are asking for very specific things through the federal courts. They would like to prevent Elon Musk and Doge from accessing federal databases. Obviously, these federal databases have a lot of incredibly private information, especially when we're talking about the Social Security Administration, which Doge was trying to

access over the weekend. That led to a high-level public servant resigning as a result. Michelle King is her name. And in that case, we're talking about medical records. Okay, because people apply for social security insurance as a result of disability. So that has to be some sort of violation of HIPAA rules and regulations. But nonetheless, they're also asking that, you know, when firing federal employees or replacing them on involuntary leave or placing them on involuntary leave, they want that all to stop. Okay, that's what they're challenging. So in court, Joshua Fisher, who's the director of the White House office of administration, told the judge the following. Musk is an employee of the White House office and serves as senior advisor to the president.

So that's the argument. You know, this is not the leader of Doge. This isn't, you know, almost like an official role. This is, we're talking about an employee of the White House office. And that office is allegedly separate from Doge. That's the argument that they're making. Now, Fisher continues, like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Musk can only advise the president and communicate the president's directives.

So I'm going to pause there because I actually think that is what's happening here. I do think that Donald Trump is utilizing Elon Musk as a political human shield. I think Donald Trump wants to cut back on federal workers. Obviously, this is something that he has campaigned on. I think Donald Trump wanted to do away with entire federal government agencies. And right now, as Trump himself is enjoying relatively high approval ratings, and when I say relative, I'm talking about relative to his previous approval ratings. Right now, he's at record highs. Elon Musk is the one who's noticing a pretty massive dip in his approval rating

according to the polls. And so Musk is the one taking the hits for what Donald Trump is effectively implementing with Musk advising him on what to do, right? So I think that's what's really playing, what's really going on here. I think that's how Musk is playing a role within the administration. But I also want to just note this argument is being made in the courts in order to uphold his position within the White House without having to worry about the constitutionality of it all. Yeah. So the point about Anita Dunn is not a bad point. There have been advisors to different presidents that don't take a salary and don't have an official position. And Anita Dunn is actually a very good example of that. So on the other hand, Anita Dunn didn't ask for the private information of every single American through Social Security, IRS, and Treasury. because that would have been mental.

And if she had asked for that, since she's also a lobbyist and a PR specialist, I would have lost my mind and said, what the hell do you need that for? And if she came up with some BS excuse about fraud, waste, and abuse, I would have said, my ass, absolutely not. And if you're going to do that, then you have to be subject to conflict of interest rules. Let me see all the people that you advise for your PR agency, for your consultancy, et cetera. and what are they going to gain from you having that information. Aha, well, that's exactly why they don't want must to be considered an employee,

because then he would be subject to conflict of interest rules, and he has massive, massive conflicts of interest. He could look at all of his business competitors information through there. On that alone, it should never be allowed. And that's anti-free market, anti-capitalism, it's arguably government tyranny to have one person just because he's the biggest owner to Trump, be able to control every America's information. If any of Biden's non-employees like Anita Dunn had asked for that, I'd say, hell no.

If any of Biden's donors like George Soros had asked for that, or Reid Hoffman had asked for that, I would say, hell no. But now Maga thinks, oh yeah, drain the swamp, not a big deal. And our donors are angels, and they don't need conflict of interest rules, and they don't need transparency. who will blindly trust the donor class. Is that what this populism was about? You've seen me reach out and saying if you're an actual populist on the right wing and you're anti-war or anti-corruption, I'm thrilled to work with you.

And I've gotten tons of blowback on that. But now comes decision time for right-wingers and for MAGA. Are you guys actually populists? Did you mean the things that you said or didn't you? So when you ask for transparency, they said, absolutely, we're going to give you a transparency, except for us. No transparency for us at all. No transparency for any of Trump's donors. By the way, whether it's Elon Musk or Miriam Edelson controlling foreign policy. No transparency at all. Conflict of interest, of course, the whole thing's a conflict of interest.

Trump took hundreds of millions of dollars from them and is now giving over foreign policy and domestic policy to them. Yes, we need transparency and conflict of interest rules for them as well. I mean, at a bare minimum, tell us what your conflicts of interest are, even if that doesn't stop you. It doesn't mean, oh, that's it, you can't do it. It just has, okay, hey, right, I do Starlink, I do SpaceX, and my competitors are Raytheon and Boeing. Oh, look at that.

I just cut all their contracts and add it to mine. Okay, then at least we know. And then we can make a knowledgeable decision. But if you say transparency for thee, but not for me, I think crook. So you're going to have to prove that you're not a crook if you're saying, don't look, don't look, don't look at what I'm doing, okay? Whatever you do, I'm the top donor. Don't look. That ain't populism, man. That's something else. Yeah, I don't think the populist wing of Trump's base has realized or even accepted that they've been co-opted by corporate interests.

and their wing of the Republican Party is currently losing. Like they've been shut out. And unfortunately, because they love Trump so much and because Trump promotes Elon Musk so much, they're just kind of going along with it, thinking what Elon Musk is up to is, it must be good. But remember, we're talking about a tech CEO, again, who has his own conflicts of interest. And it is interesting what the focus has been in regard to cuts in the federal workforce, or the dismantling of certain government institutions or agencies. Interesting that first you have, you know,

the dismantling of things like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or talks of dismantling the education department. They haven't even touched the Pentagon. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, last thing is on that. I mean, look, that's why I said Pentagon. If you really mean it about cutting waste, fraud and abuse, and this is where the populace right does agree with me,

you would go and look at the Pentagon. If you haven't looked at the Pentagon, oh, God, you haven't gotten there yet, right? And then all you've done is cut people, you know, cancer treatment and AIDS treatment, et cetera. And then you tell me, and that, you know, combined is like a nickel and a dime compared to the giant corporate tax history. Don't tell me that you really mean it when you were talking about cutting. Look, Bannon is a dangerous dude and on social issues. We could not disagree more.

But on the right, it seems pretty clear that, you know, he's going to lead the rebellion against Musk. And if Bannon is driven away, and I'll have some upsides on the social issues, right? But that means the business people and the donor class, et cetera, one. And then Elon apparently is going to go and try to buy the Democratic Party too. At some point, we're going to see if right-wing populace wake up or not, okay? And I know it's super early for them to turn on Trump, but at the same time, Trump's moving, as least Elon is moving so freaking fast. And so we'll see what happens.

Look, last thing, one of our members, Boomer Dragon Cat said, Jenk, interview Bannon. Let's get his insight into Musk. My God, if we interviewed Bannon, the internet's heads would explode. So maybe we should do it. You mean so Tuesday, basically? Like, anyway, we got to go. We got to take a break.

When we come back, we've got more news for you, including what RFK Jr. is hyper-focusing on now that he has been confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary. We'll be right back. All right, back on TYT, Janganana with you guys also, Vicky Cable and Noob, that's fun. They hit the join button below. We appreciate you guys.

Johnny Diamond, I'm going to call you Johnny every time, Chris, both gifted five memberships. You guys are American heroes and Dave Goliath on join on t.com, where annual subscription gets you two months off. Okay, apparently Trump just mentioned me, but we're live on the air. I have no idea what he said. We'll get to that a little bit later in the show when we figure out what happened, all right? So God help me. All right, here we go. Anna, what's next?

All right. We got to talk about what RFK Jr. is up to now that he's been confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary. Listen, I know people, including members of my family, who've had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they did get, than people have getting off of heroin. The withdrawal period is, and it's written on the label. I have some experience. Very well documented. Myself, Mr. Kennedy, this is personal for me.

When I was a young woman and I was struggling with depression, thankfully, I had the resources to help me get through it. I think that everyone should have access to that care. And your job as secretary is to expand access to care, not to spread lies and misinformation. The first order of business for RFK Jr., now that he has been confirmed as the Secretary for Health and Human Services is to focus on a class of drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. His argument is that these drugs are overprescribed, that they're not as harmless as the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe. And for

individuals who want to stop taking said drugs, the withdrawals are pretty terrible. So let's go over what he is planning to do, what he's not going to do, and what the reality is when it comes to this class of drugs, also known as SSRIs. So he outlined, outlined his plans recently saying that, you know, he's calling for the federal government to investigate the root causes of a broad range of conditions including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. So I have psoriasis. It sucks. I'm interested to see what he finds from his inquiry or deep investigation into it. But nonetheless, while there weren't any mentions of things like childhood vaccines, which is a good thing.

You know, he did also mention these SSRIs and the multitude of mental health issues that both adults and children are struggling with. The government, he said, would assess the prevalence of and treat and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin, re-uptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers. Again, these are known as SSRIs. We're talking about drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, you get the picture. Now, Kennedy has been ringing the alarm about what he believes is the over-prescription of SSRIs for a while now. He has suggested during an X spaces that he took part in in 2023 that tremendous circumstantial evidence suggested that people taking antidepressants were more likely to carry out school shooting.

he did not provide any research or data to reinforce that notion. Researchers so far have not found a link between the two. And in fact, studies suggest that only a minority of school shooters were prescribed medication before they carried out, you know, the tragic crimes that they carried out. Now, a big thing to also point out about RFK juniors, aversion to SSRIs is that, like, He seems to be confusing dependency with addiction. So he's comparing people who stop taking SSRIs as individuals who stop using heroin. But we're talking about two different things here.

It is true that individuals who take SSRIs for a long period of time can develop a dependence on them. And if they stop taking the drugs cold turkey, they will suffer some serious withdrawal symptoms. If they wean off the drugs too quickly, they can also suffer from similar consequences. But again, dependency and addiction are two different things. Individuals can often experience negative symptoms when they stop taking them, especially if they do so abruptly. This is similar to physical dependence, but it is different from addiction. And according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, up to 80% of people who abruptly stop taking these drugs or reduce the dosage to quickly suffer from withdrawal symptoms. Now, Professor Keith Humphreys, who's an expert in

psychology and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, says that antidepressants and heroin are in different universes when it comes to addiction risk. In my 35 years in the addiction field, I've met only two or three people who thought they were addicted to antidepressants versus thousands who were addicted to heroin and other opioids. Now, the other thing that I'll just say is I am open to inquiry into an investigation to see whether there is evidence of overprescription of these types of drugs as it pertains to minors. Look, the pharmaceutical industry, and we've done so many stories about this, takes

doctors on vacations and gifts them. And that's how the opioid crisis became such a monster. It's because of the corrupting influence of pharmaceutical lobbyists and how they try to encourage doctors to prescribe drugs, in some cases overprescribed drugs. So I think that it is maybe possible that there's overprescription. However, I get a little uncomfortable with RFK Jr. kind of minimizing the importance of these drugs for people who genuinely do need them because it has improved the quality of life for a lot of Americans. And so we have to be careful. I mean, when it came to the opioid crisis,

you know, when the federal government came in and they started implementing pretty like harsh restrictions, that ended up, you know, turning into a heroin crisis and then a fentanyl crisis. And then people who genuinely did need those pain medications were unable to access them even though they were struggling with chronic pain. So this is a delicate matter. And so I want him to proceed with caution. Those are my thoughts. What do you think, Jank? So first, I'm going to go to our members. They're split on this. So go to t.com slash join and become a member and be part of the show, get all of our content. Jesus, take the wheel says, as someone who's been on SSRIs for most of my life due to a very abusive childhood. I can say that these drugs are life-saving for people

dealing with depression, myself included. On the other hand, worst-case scenario dragon says, I agree SSRIs are being over-prescribed. We need to pay for therapists and fix our effed-up culture. You're not crazy, the culture is. So I agree with both of that. Yeah, I agree with both of them. Yeah, so what do I think of RFG Jr's plans? Well, that's a giant, it depends. So what does it depend on? Well, what is this plan? We don't know it yet. So if right now he's saying let's study them. Great, I get no problem studying though. Study away. I love science. Okay. And if you make up junk science, then I'm not going to love it. But if you're doing real meta studies, that would be terrific. You want to do a whole new study. You want to do a whole new 10 studies. It's not going to make any difference in the budget at all. It's a drop in the bucket. It's not even a drop. So have that at Haas, give us more science. And so am I foreclosing the possibility that these drugs, you know, might be dangerous in ways that we don't necessarily expect? No, I'm not foreclosing that possibility. Look, there's been a lot of studies on it already, so I'm more likely to believe that. On the other hand,

it's not like the pharmaceutical companies don't try to affect studies. So we have to be careful about that as well. And I would like that to be as neutral a process as possible. So on the other hand, if Kennedy says, so I'm a little concerned about this. So that's why we're banning all that medication now. I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no, no. Like, there's a lot of people that it helps, and so far the studies say that it is relatively safe. So, but he hasn't said that, okay? So if he switches over to that side, then then I'm going to have huge problems with it.

But in terms of finding out more, I don't see any harm in it. And by the way, concerns regarding the overprescription of this specific class of drugs have those concerns have existed for a long time and not just in the United States. There have been researchers in the UK who have been concerned about this as well. I want to just quickly go to Graphic 7 here where it was reported that in the U.S. antidepressants are among the most prescribed medicines, the majority prescribed by primary care doctors, not mental health experts. according to the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. And to our viewer's point about how people need access to therapy, I totally agree with you on that because a lot of insurance companies, they don't cover talk therapy.

Insurance companies make it difficult. And talk therapy is expensive. It really is. If you're paying for that out of pocket, it might end up that it's cheaper to just take a prescription drug, but that might not be the best answer for you. So that is a legitimate concern. Around 13.2% of U.S. adults were using antidepressants between 2017 and 2018.

And that's according to the CDC and the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This number is believed to have increased since, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. And in 2023, the UK, which actually ranks one place below the United States in regard to the number of people taking antidepressants, you know, a group of medical professionals looked into this. And so over the past decade, the group explains in an open letter in the British Medical Journal, antidepressant prescriptions have almost doubled in England, rising from 47.3 million in 2011 to 85.6 million in 2022 to 2023, over 8.6 million. adults in England are now prescribed SSRIs annually, and that's nearly 20% of adults with

prescription set to rise over the next decade. And look, these drugs obviously, like all prescription drugs, have side effects, including weight gain, sexual dysfunction, bleeding, dizziness that can lead to falls. And so there are side effects. There is concern that the corrupting influence of pharmaceutical companies is leading to the over-prescription of these drugs. I have no problem with anyone looking more deeply into this issue. But yeah, I mean, I would be 100% against banning these drugs because, again, they have improved the lives of countless people, not just in America, but obviously across the world as well. We just want to be more careful and ensure they're not being overprescribed.

Yeah, so our members are super split on this. We've got a poll on it too. Are you worried about RFK Jr. looking into this? The polls are always in a live chat, 67% saying they're worried. So watch the show Monday through Friday, 6 o'clock Eastern, you'll get to participate that way as well. So Jackal Dragon, 1991 says on Twitch, does RFK want to know what happens when I don't take my antidepressants, right? On the other hand, big B510 says antidepressants suck and absolutely give horrible side effects, if anyone that disagrees with this. First of all, don't, because a lot of people disagree. and you might have had a different experience than other people, but there are many experiences like yours. So that's why I think if it starts with a conversation and we look into whether

things are being over prescribed, I would view that as a good thing. And remember guys, if we had had this conversation about Oxy, you know, 10, 15 years ago, a lot of the doctors would have said, no, no, no, no, it's totally fine. We're not overprescribed. everything is fine, just trust us. And it turns out in that case, everything wasn't fine. And they were over prescribing. And Oxy was not doing what it said it was doing. So let's look into it more without taking any rash actions and taking anything off the market.

When we come back from the break, let's talk a little bit about what one Democrat is arguing is the main problem with the party, why they're failing and what they need to change. We'll be right back.