The Young Turks - Trump Brazenly Admits Treason

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

Trump is admitting treason and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right. Welcome to the Young Turks.

Jake U Granite Kusperian, wonderful fresh new week. So speaking wonderful, we got a great co-host for you guys in the second hour. Morgan Harper, one of the Justice Democrats, is going to join us on the panel. Nice. She's also going to be on the conversation. So is Rokana. So we're littered with justice today, okay? Justice everywhere you turn.

So Rokana, of course, the first just Democrat and Morgan Harper are one of the candidates. Now she's fantastic. So wait till you see her later in the program. Later in the program as well, Nate Silver Coles Bernie Sanders followers residue. Okay, so is that offensive? How offensive is it? What's Nate's motivations, et cetera? Some strikeback coming.

So that'll be fun for everybody. And by the way, later in the week, another fascinating guest we have for you guys? Edward Snowden. What? Hmm, interesting. Very in the lead, you are burying the lead. Okay, there he is. That's tomorrow, tomorrow at 8 o'clock.

You know, some people don't know we do interviews in the third hour. Yes, we do plenty of interviews. They are in the third hour. Rokana, Morgan Harbor today, Edward Stone, tomorrow. Okay, let's get started. What do you got? All right. Over the weekend, Donald Trump admitted to reporters that he did, in fact, mentioned Biden

during his phone calls with the leader of Ukraine. Take a look. Conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that, We don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine. I'm not looking to hurt him with respect to his son. Joe's got a lot of problems. Joe's got enough problems without that.

But what he said was a terrible thing. And, you know, he really made it a – it was an offer. It was beyond an offer. It was something where he said, I'm not going to give billions of dollars to Ukraine. unless they remove this prosecutor. So Trump is clearly deflecting from a whistleblower report indicating that he made some troubling comments during a phone conversation with the leader of Ukraine. Now, according to people familiar with the matter, Trump pressed Zelensky to dig up potentially

damaging information against Biden during a July 25th phone call. And there were allegations that Trump withheld for an aid to Ukraine, unless Trump was Trump got what he wanted through this investigation. Although the intelligence communities inspector general found the complaint credible and urgent enough to disclose to congressional committees, Trump has repeatedly insisted he did nothing wrong and his administration has refused to share details of that complaint with Congress. All right, so bringing it down one by one.

So there's what he, Trump wants out of Ukraine and what he's going to get in return. So both parts of that are problematic, legally, constitutionally, and ethically. So first off, he appears to want an investigation, whether it's justified or not justified, of Biden's son to begin, and Biden, to begin in the Ukraine. So he's asking for a favor, but now it is not a normal favor that a president would ask for, hey, let's say we're doing trade negotiations, I'll give you, you know, I'll lift the tariffs on cars, you lift the tariffs on butter, you can call that a favor, but that is very normal negotiations for presidents.

In this case, he's not asking on behalf of America, he's asking on behalf of himself against a political rival who's an American from a foreign country, already deeply problematic. And do we know that? Yes, you just heard him admit it. Now, he's going to backtrack from that, but there's no backtracking. You saw it on tape. He said it was largely about anti-corruption. It was largely about vice president Biden. He said it. Look, this is why I've always said that Trump's not going to last. I know we're pretty deep into his administration. He's too stupid for a cover-up. He will blur out things that are things he actually did because he doesn't realize it's illegal, like when he said in an NBC interview, yeah, it fired Comey because he was investigating

me about Russia. So now, that had no consequences because of Mueller's bureaucracy and Pelosi's incompetence will come back to that issue. But now the second half is super important. The whistleblower within the intelligence community said that Donald Trump made a promise. That's what was created the urgent situation, not what he wanted, but what he promised in return, apparently while talking to the Ukrainian leader. But at this point, the Trump administration is saying we will not let Congress have that whistleblower complaint as they are legally obliged to. They're supposed to get that complaint. Congress is, that's the whole point of this whistleblower mechanism in this particular context. And the Trump administration say, nope, we're not going to cooperate with Congress, and

so you're never going to get to find out. But I do want to say one more thing about the tape you just saw. If you notice in the second video that we showed you, I mean, what a thug this guy is. He said in respect to Biden, I'm not looking to hurt him with respect to his son. I mean, that's a classic threat, right? It's what mob was. I'm not looking to hurt your family, but I mean, if we were to have issues. issues.

Right. And also, I mean, the way that Trump is playing this is very similar to how he played it during the Russia investigation. He goes on these tweet storms where he seems to incriminate himself, and then he'll backpedal once he realizes that it might hurt him. But at the end of the day, what matters the most is whether or not there are going to be consequences. And as we know with Russia and the various slip ups he had in his public communication

on that, there were no consequences. In this case, I have no doubt that this is going to hurt Biden politically. Now, the Washington Post and a bunch of other establishment news sources are saying, nope, no, Biden's son didn't do anything wrong, we're fact checking this, and he's free and clear. I don't know if I'm necessarily buying that because, look, Biden's son, it is true, all of a sudden gets to serve on this board for an oil company or I should say gas company in Ukraine. He had no experience, no expertise, and this happened back in 2014 when Biden was still vice president.

So was there some corruption involved? Is there a possibility there? Yes, of course. But understand what Trump is trying to do here in deflecting and focusing on Biden as opposed to what he allegedly did, not based on what a bunch of liberals are assuming, but based on what was reported in a formal whistleblower complaint. And even the Wall Street Journal reported that there were as many. many as eight conversations that Trump had with Zelensky, where he pressured him to do this

investigation on Joe Biden. Now with that said, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to jump in real quick, Anna. Because look, if you're, if this is sounding a little different to you than where your other stuff you might be hearing, that's because as usual, we're almost alone in holding both sides accountable. So if you're listening to Fox News or conservative outlets, you'll hear, oh, it's all Biden and his son. That's the real problem. Trump doesn't have any problem at all. If you're listening

to MSNBC, and by the way, not just MSNBC, but almost all the mainstream media, as Anna pointed out, they'll say his son was definitely cleared. That's not true. So it's fair to say there is no direct evidence of Hunter Biden and the vice president in any kind of deal that involved U.S. foreign policy. That's, so they don't have a smoking gun. That's not the say that he's been cleared, there's been no investigation, and just because you don't have the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So you have to be careful in how you frame that language. So look, here's what we do know, and so if you're a Democrat, your head can go ahead and explode

right now, because how dare you ever even cover this issue? But the son was definitely getting money, Hunter Biden was, from being on the board of this company. It's called Burisma Holdings, it's a gas company. joins the board in 2014. In 2016, Vice President Joe Biden goes to Ukraine and says that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees until a prosecutor was removed. And now the international community wanted that prosecutor removed, that is super fair.

And in fact, and this is really important. Our ambassador at the time, Obama's ambassador, said that the proceedings that that prosecutor had against Burisma Holdings should continue. That was the official American position. So that's pretty good evidence that it wasn't related to his son. But, yes, that prosecutor had earlier investigated that company. So look, if in a perfect world, would I investigate both Biden and Trump? Yes.

But we don't live in a perfect world. Exactly. Do I trust the Trump administration to investigate Biden? Hell no. They've made up countless hundreds, thousands of things. I don't, that is not, that would not be in any way, shape, or form an independent investigation. But beyond that, asking Ukraine investigative is a totally different matter. That is basically, again, accepting the equivalent of political contributions from a foreign

source against your political rival. And so that's totally unacceptable and illegal. So I'm going to skip ahead here and go straight to Biden's response to these accusations by Donald Trump and members of his administration. Let's go to video B4. Here's Biden responding to Donald Trump. I know Trump deserves to be investigated. He is violating every basic norm of a president. You should be asking him the question, why is he on the phone with a foreign leader trying to intimidate a foreign leader if that's what happened? That appears what happened. You should be looking at Trump.

Trump's doing this because he knows I'll beat him like a drum. And he's using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me. So Biden's statement regarding how he's, you know, Trump's afraid because he knows that Biden is going to beat him like a drum. I know that based on polling right now, it does appear that Biden is likely to beat Trump. But just understand that the way that Trump is playing this, and when you consider how well-organized the right-wing propaganda machine is, these possible corruption issues with Hunter Biden will pose an issue for him if he's the nominee. There's no question about it.

I mean, it's really 2016 2.0 because that's how Trump wins. That's how he won the last time around. By focusing on Hillary Clinton, calling her crooked Hillary, he's going to turn around do the exact same thing with Biden. Well, so this was a mixed bag for me, because on the one hand, if, you know, do I think that we should take into account Trump's baseless attacks if they are in fact baseless against the nominee? No, because he can make up anything about any of the candidates.

And here, there is no direct evidence. There is an interesting question, but no direct evidence. But when's the last time Republican voters needed direct evidence? But really the playing ground here is independent voters and how much they can convince them. So would this damage Biden in the general? Probably. But that leads me to my second point. It's because the Democrats are not good at politics.

So what Biden did is potentially problematic. Maybe, maybe, maybe. You'd have to have new evidence that right now does not exist as far as we know. that would come up in the course of whatever investigation that you would do, right? In the case of Trump, we have very direct evidence that he asked the Ukrainian leader for a favor for his political campaign, definitely legal. By the way, John Cornyn from Texas is the second Republican in charge of the Senate in the hierarchy, and he said, quote, there is no direct evidence that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate

Biden or his family saying the allegation is based on hearsay reports. No, it's not. But how would we know? You just heard Trump say it on tape. I talked to him about Vice President Biden. So Cornyn is 100% incorrect. So if Democrats are good at politics, it would be a thousand times more damaging to Trump than Biden.

But Democrats suck at politics, so you never know. Yeah, so let me jump in on Cornyn because he also said this. I just frankly can't imagine why people have lost their minds so much. over these daily reports of one thing or another that seem to consume everybody's attention in the news coverage. But here's the issue, right? Members of Congress have been barred from even taking a look at that official whistleblower complaint, which again was filed by a member of our intelligence community.

So if he hasn't seen what that report contains, but he has seen Donald Trump's very public statements admitting that he had a conversation with the leader of Ukraine to discuss Biden and an investigation into Biden, then where's he coming from? I mean, this is a perfect example of the tribalism on the right wing, and this is how they get away with all sorts of criminal activity, because they ban together, they defend each other regardless of how much it could hurt U.S. interests. So we're going to talk about this more later, but just a couple of quick notes here. If they don't give the Congress what the whistleblower actually said, as they are legally

obliged to do, of course the correct remedies impeachment, you literally have no other remedy. Otherwise, you're just surrendering and saying, yes, they can break the law anytime they like and there'll be no consequences. And if it turns out, Trump did say that he would withhold American money and aid to Ukraine in exchange for a political gift from Ukraine. That's clearly illegal, unconstitutional, bribery, the most impeachable thing is literally in the impeachment clause in the Constitution, bribery, et cetera. So, but that requires the Democrats to have an ounce of courage, which is unlikely anyway,

we'll talk about that more later. But the last two things on this story in substance are going back to the thuggish behavior. So Giuliani didn't just stop at threatening or Trump implicating and implying a threat against Hunter Biden. Giuliani went on Fox News Sunday and said the kid, unfortunately, is a drug addict. They're the worst. They are. They threaten people's, their political rivals families like they're mobsters.

They're the worst of the worst. Yeah, so he went even further than that. We have some video. Let's go to A4. When you are negotiating with China on sensitive issues. and your family gets enriched with an investment in a private equity fund. Now, why do China give the money, why would China give the money to a drug-challenged private equity owner, except influence his father?

They didn't make any money on this. Real quick. Adam Schiff wants to see. And the Obama administration did nothing about it. Adam Schiff wants to see the whistleblower complaint. Why not? I wouldn't give Adam Schiff anything. Adam Schiff said yesterday.

Why not just give the whistleblower complaint? Because you make it hard on these phonies. That's Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, doing the media rounds to attack Hunter Biden, calling him a drug addict, deflecting from an investigation that should be done on Donald Trump in response to an official whistleblower complaint. And this is how the Republicans work and operate. You know, while Democrats are, as Jank would say, playing patty cakes, you have Republicans doing what they do.

They will go on television, they will say the most heinous things about their political opponents and they'll steamroll. Yeah, and Donald Trump said about whether Joe Biden talked to his son about these dealings in Ukraine. He said, he said he never spoke to his son. Does anyone believe that one? That's very interesting because you say you didn't speak to your son about the Trump Tower meeting in 2016.

So would anybody believe what you're saying? Not only that, you theoretically have your money and all your holdings in. a so-called hilarious blind trust with your sons. So and you say, well, okay, it's not a really a blind trust and I still own everything, but it's okay because I'm not gonna talk to my sons about my business holdings. And you just said, could anybody believe such a thing? That's preposterous. But again, no hint of irony, and for Republican voters, no hint of caring about facts.

And by the way, the Washington Post also reported recently that Rudy Giuliani is attempting to dig up dirt prior to the 2020 elections to help Donald Trump. Since the spring, Giuliani has pushed the Ukrainians to pursue two investigations. One is the one involving Hunter Biden into a gas tycoon who had Hunter Biden on his board, and another into allegations that Democrats colluded with Ukraine to release information on Paul Manafort during the 2016 election. No, look, if Democrats had courage, I would now say open season, you're going to go after Biden's sons passed.

You know, if you want to talk about official business dealings, that's one thing. But getting into whether he had addiction issues, no, that's a totally different ball of wax. Okay, then all the Trump kids are wide open. So if you were doing, if you're a reporter, a real reporter, if you're doing, if you're a real reporter, If you're doing APO research, if you're in any of the Democratic campaigns, you should immediately be looking into everything Donald Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump have ever done illicit affairs, any kind of addiction issues, and any, obviously, wrong business dealings. By Trump's own standard, the door is now wide open. In fact, if you're a Democrat and you don't do it, you're a loser. If they're going to do a hatch a job on your campaign and your kids and you don't respond,

well, that's why you lose elections. But I also want to just remind you that the utility of that is so limited when it comes to the right. You know, with the right wing, including evangelical voters, I mean, let's make up something insane. Like one of the Trump sons having an affair cheating on his wife with like a Fox News personality. Oh, wait, that already happened, Anna. Huh. Yeah. Or the president himself cheating on multiple wives with porn stars.

And okay, if family is apparently open game, that's the Trump policy. Are we gonna talk about Melania's modeling career? So hey, look, I didn't start this game. Trump started it. So, and Biden is not my favorite candidate by a long shot. But if I don't believe in patty cakes, I believe in equal and equal. opposite reaction. If you ask me, should the Democrats open that door?

I'd say no, because it's not the right thing to do, and it's not relevant to who's going to be president. But if the Republicans open the door and you don't react and you don't counter, then you're weak and spineless. I would investigate every colonel of his family now. And believe me, you're going to find a lot of things there that are way worse than anything Hunter Biden has even imagined doing. When we come back from the break, we'll have a discussion about weak in spineless Democrats.

And then later in the show, we'll discuss Nate Silver referring to Bernie Sanders supporters as residue. We'll be back. 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. debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical

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Not really. I mean, there technically is not going to happen. Okay, so we got more on that in a second. Mima LeCat says, T.R.T. is my blood pressure medication. Mondays make me feel like I need a double dose. Yeah, look, that's why I try to be constructive. Even though the Trump era is filled with madness, we're also trying to show you how you can fight back.

And keep in mind, we're going to win. Lucy 07 says, behind in my podcast, listen to the September 18th last night on my way home for my second job. Jenkin, Anna, too strong. Anna, you speak for me, and I know I speak for many others. Please keep up the great work. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thanks for watching.

I'm going to do one last one here from Twitter. Pink Room Music says, I'll say it out loud. If this takes down both Biden and Trump, it's a good thing. No, I don't agree. And I'll tell you why. I think that I hate illegitimate attacks working as a matter of principle. And it's largely an illegitimate attack on Biden, unless someone can find direct evidence that his discussions with Ukraine did, in effect, was affected by his son's financial interest.

So I, no, that's not how I want to win. And I'm not being soft. I want to win really badly, and I could talk about Joe Biden's systemic corruption all day long, and that's plenty of reason to beat him. But the last thing I want is some BS Trump maneuver working. So that's not how I'd go about it. The way that Democrats play things, it's likely to hurt Biden and it will not hurt Trump. Because you need people to hold him accountable, and members of his own party aren't going to do that.

Yeah, very, very likely. But that leads us to our next story. Yes, all right, let's do it. How seriously are you taking the impeachment talking? Not at all, seriously. We had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine. Everybody knows it. It's just a Democrat witch hunt.

Here we go again. That's Donald Trump claiming that he's not worried about impeachment following a whistleblower complaint that he had made a troubling promise to the leader of Ukraine. Now, Nancy Pelosi is still refusing to impeach him. and maybe that's the reason why he claims he's not worried about impeachment. But over the weekend, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Nancy Pelosi out, tweeting, quote, at this point, the bigger national scandal isn't the president's law-breaking behavior. It is the Democratic Party's refusal to impeach him for it.

Now, what did Pelosi do in response to this whistleblower report? Well, according to Politico, Pelosi wrote in a rare weekend letter to lawmakers that President Donald Trump would enter, quote, a grave new chapter of lawlessness if he succeeded in blocking Congress from learning about his reported conversations, pressing Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Now, this actually isn't a rare response from Nancy Pelosi. She loves to write strongly worded letters. But obviously, that's done nothing to hinder Donald Trump and his lawless behavior.

Okay, so that's hilarious. Oh, it's grave, is it, Nancy? Wow, who cares, who cares what you say? What are you going to do? You've written these letters in the past. Oh, you better not do this, and then Trump doesn't. You go, okay, never mind, I'm just kidding, you do whatever the hell you want. So your empty threats are totally and utterly useless.

In fact, you're counterproductive because you're saying it's a new era of lawlessness, as if what Donald Trump was doing before was not lawlessness. So it's an implicit way of helping him for the hundredth time in a row. Now, to AOC's comments, she is exactly right, why? So you think logically, wait, wait, I mean, it seems like what Trump is doing is the most significant problem. I mean, working with a foreign government, asking them for a political favor against his opponent, maybe even offering them American aid, that's, in essence, a bribe, let alone campaign

finance violations, obviously illegal unconstitutional, et cetera. So how could Pelosi's reaction and the democratically reaction overall be worse? But remember this, people will always break laws. That's not the question. They'll always be an injustice somewhere, that's not the question. And from time to time, there'll be a terrible political actor who breaks the laws. That's not the question. The question is, do we have a system that can stop it?

And so if the system says it's okay, well, then you've opened the floodgates to complete lawlessness. So that's why not taking action against the crime or a violation, a constitutional violation of our system is more dangerous than the illegal act in the first place. There will always be illegal acts. The question is whether you're gonna do something about it. And if you say you won't, what you've done is, yes, your actions are worse, because you've now made lawlessness the regular order in America.

And she thinks- It's devastating. This is not the politically savvy thing to do pursuing impeachment because she's worried that that's actually going to hurt the Democrats. But in reality, it's funny, like the way the media reports the investigations that Democrats are doing is that they're trying to impeach him. So the right-wingers in this country, right-wing voters specifically, think that she's actually pursuing impeachment when she's not. So she's gonna suffer the political ramifications of impeachment when she's

she's not even doing impeachment. And by suffer of political ramifications, I'm only talking about people who don't support Democrats in the first place. So it doesn't even matter. You're right, Jank. The most important thing to do here is protect the rule of law, and more importantly, protect our system of government, which is supposed to have checks and balances in place. But Pelosi's scared, and strongly worded letters is not enough to get Donald Trump to do the

right thing. That is not a consequence for Donald Trump. If anything, he's been emboldened by the outcome of previous investigations. So one other thing I wanted to note was that the Justice Department's civil division is run by Jody Hunt. And Jody Hunt argued that since Congress isn't a formal impeachment process, it shouldn't be given access to top secret or secret testimony and evidence Mueller collected in front of the grand jury. So since they're not in a formal impeachment process.

So why don't you start a formal impeachment process and get the documents you need to do a proper investigation? Otherwise, we're just playing games. And you know, Nancy Pelosi gets the most heat, but there are plenty of other Democrats who are incredibly weak and spineless on this issue, including Adam Schiff in this next video. Take a look. If the president did in fact in that phone call push the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden eight times, as the Wall Street Journal reported,

Is it an impeachable offense in your view? Well, Jake, you know I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment for the reason that I think the founders contemplated in a country that has elections every four years, that this would be an extraordinary remedy, remedy of last resort, not first resort. But if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his side, opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is co-equal to the evil that conduct represents. We're going to hear from the director of national intelligence on Thursday. Hawaii is the first director to withhold ever a whistleblower complaint, and we are going to make sure that we get that complaint, that whistleblower is protected, and we're going to make

sure that we find out whether the president is engaged in this kind of improper conduct. But it may be that we do have to move forward with that extraordinary remedy. God, the Democrats are so pathetic. Do you know that 98% of voters don't even know what you just said? Blabee, blabby, blabby, blah, blah, blah, extraordinary co-equal remedies, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now let me show you how to do it because you obviously, well, it's not that you don't know how to do it. It's that Nancy Pelosi has sent out her Unix to go and say, I don't know if we're going to do anything. I'm so scared.

I'm so scared, right? So, okay, Adam, take notes. Okay, this is what you do when Jake Tapper asked you that question. You say, if they do not give us the whistleblower complaint, as they are legally obliged to do, we will impeach. We will not allow them to break the law. There will be consequences. If they do give it to us, and it turns out Donald Trump promised American aid so that he can get a political gift,

he will be immediately impeached. That is unconstitutional. If you'd like, I could read you the constitution right now. now. If he didn't promise that and they do turn over the transcript, well, then we're having a different conversation. But if either one of those things happen, we're going to impeach and we're going to do it immediately. See, that is clear. Yeah. No one is confused by your position. Instead, what do we have right now? Jerry Nadler says, as the head of the Judiciary committee, that impeachment hearings have begun. So he brings in Corey Lewandowski to be the first

witness, Lewandowski says, yeah, I'm not going to tell you anything, you idiot. Nadler goes, oh, okay. No, no, no, no. Are there consequences? Did you think this through? Or is Pelosi not allowing you to do your job? If you don't give me what I am legally allowed to have for this committee and you say, no, I'm not going to follow the law, you're under arrest for contempt of Congress right now.

Put him in cops, put him in jail, okay? You know, I talked to a bunch of Trump supporters because I was in Iowa this weekend. I'm gonna tell you the longer stories of the postgame. That's the last half hour of the show that's just from members. TYT.com slash join to become a member and get that. But I'm gonna give you one small part of it now. One of the Trump supporters was laughing at Nadler. He was so happy.

He's like, what an idiot. How weak. Lewandowski made a fool out of him. And I said to him, if he had actually acted strong and said, And if you're not going to answer my questions, I'm going to put you under arrest. How would you have felt about it then? He's like, well, that would have been different because that would have been strong. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, see, God, you guys are so stupid. So Trump supporters now think, well, impeachment proceedings have begun and the Democrats are a joke. They can't get anything out of the Trump because they're losers and weak, right? And on the other hand, Pelosi, but you're not allowed to get certain legal documents because Pelosi won't call it impeachment. So as Anna just pointed out, Trump's lawyers go out there and go, well, technically it's not an impeachment, so you're not allowed to have this material. Ha, ha, right?

It's the worst of all worlds. You know the Trump team, they're his legal team? When they found out Mueller was not going to indict based on principle that you can't indict a sitting president, according to Mueller's interpretation of the Department of Justice memos, they were like, excellent, moron. before we had to worry about whether he was going to indict us. So we were, we wouldn't, they wouldn't attack Mueller. The minute they found that he's not going to indict, they said, savage him.

Now go tell everybody what an idiot he is and how corrupt he is. And now he's working with the Democrats. Let's ruin Mueller, okay? Because Mueller did preemptive surrender. And so now the Democrats are doing preemptive surrender. And so, look, I'll get into the consequences for you. I mean, those are the things that I mentioned about that Adam Schiff should say, I said that because that's the reality.

If you say to the Trump administration, you don't have to follow the law when Congress asks you for something, and they have a legal right to receive that information, that's why Trump, right after the Mueller report wound up being nothing because Pelosi wouldn't pursue it, he made the call to Ukraine because he said, oh, okay, I guess I could work with any foreign government. There's never any consequences. I could break any laws, I can get dirt from a foreign government, which is clearly illegal. I can promise to give them stuff on behalf of America, which is wildly illegal and unconstitutional.

Because who cares? The Democrats are stupid and weak. I'm going to run them over with a steamroller. And right now, Trump supporters all across the country, they don't view that as a problem for Trump. They viewed as, hey, that guy is strong. And he was right about the Democrats. They're a bunch of cowards. Well, our members agree with your analysis and your strong language jank. Rob says, nailed it jank, analysis like that is why I listen to TYT. And Cheryl Josie says, it's time to ask Pelosi, who has what compromise on her? And oh, that's a good point. And why she won't impeach Trump, it's gone beyond her donors now, this is surreal.

So I'm so grateful that you made that point. And I wanted to bring this up earlier in the show. You know, it is kind of interesting that the Democrats have refused to do a full investigation into Donald Trump's financial dealings with foreign leaders, particularly Russia, which has given Donald Trump loans when he had no business having loans. I'm wondering if they're refusing to do that because they know that members of their own party, particularly some of the more centrist establishment Democrats have dirt on them, right?

Yeah. So their own financial dealings when it comes to other world leaders. I don't know, it's just a guess. No, no, it's an excellent guess. So let me fill in a little bit here so you get the details. So for example, Richard Neal, head of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of Pelosi's Unix, he had the right to ask for Trump's New York State tax returns. For a couple of weeks, Trump had not sued yet to block it.

And he could have gotten it at any moment. He voluntarily chose not to get Trump's tax returns. The Democrats had it, they had it, the elusive tax returns. All Richard Neal had to do was asked for it. He didn't ask for it. Now you wanna know something interesting? Richard Neal has not released his tax returns. Ah, okay.

So the viewer there and we read member comments first, so t.t.com slash join to become a member and we do the show together. The viewer there I think is a little miss, you know, headed in slightly wrong direction when talking about Compromont on Nancy Pelosi. I don't think that they have some sort of incriminating evidence, et cetera. Well, no, it's much simpler than that. One, the Democrats also take corporate donor money. So that's why they never call out the Republicans for taking corporate donor money.

They also have, they're also incredibly wealthy, the great majority of them. And a lot of them don't want to release their tax returns. And so they're following the rules of the club. The club is, screw your voters, who cares about Americans? The only people that matter are the people inside the club. So you have to be genteel. Now, the Republicans, they don't give a damn about that. So they come into the club, swelding, you know, wielding whatever weapon of choice you want to use in a political context.

I like swelding. I know, swelding was a nice, interesting word that I made up. Anyway, but the Democrats are like, oh, no, I do declare. Don't fight back. Otherwise, the things, people inside the club would be exposed. Yeah, how about the voters? Don't you want to fight for your voters? I do declare voters.

Well, part of the problem is they haven't fought for, and I'm talking about Democratic leadership, they haven't fought for voters in such a long time that it really did give rise to someone like Donald Trump who used his populist rhetoric to get elected. All right, we got to take a break. Hold on. One last thing. Guys, Richard Neal has a Justice Democrat opponent. Alex Morse, M-O-R-S-E.

Please go to his website, find out more about him, because you're never going to fix the problems in this country, including. Trump and his cronies until you get rid of the corporate Democrats that are the assistance to Donald Trump. And that's exactly what Richard Neal is. He is the worst of the worst in helping Donald Trump stay in power. So if you want to fight against Republicans, you go justice Democrats and get the goddamn corporate Democrats out of the way so we can actually get at the Republicans.

Alex Morse go and he doesn't take any corporate pack money. What all Richard Neal does is take corporate pack money. So go find your Justice Democrats and tell Richard Neal, justice is coming. When we come back from the break, we have incredible video featuring a Republican who has tougher talk, way tougher talk than anyone else when it comes to Donald Trump and this whistleblower report. 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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A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. I'm right back. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks.

If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content, while support. Supporting Independent Media, become a member at t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on a young Turks. Jordan Ruck writes, and Nancy Pelosi seems to have conflated her, quote, leadership with, quote, writing a letter to the editor. Hashtag by Felicia, hope she loses her primary. You know, Shahid Bhattar has been on the show. He's running against her.

He's a credible candidate. He's very smart, excellent progressive. And if you'd asked me in a private moment, you know, if I thought he could beat her, when all this started, I would have said probably not, okay? Now I think he can beat her. She's so toxic, so incompetent, and it's now internationally known, and including in her district. And I bet you there's a lot of super pissed progressives. And Samson's going, not I bet you, I was on the radio there.

I can tell you, right? The mood has shifted completely. Go so support Shahid Watar, he's got a real shot now. So it's a whole new world. Bernie, except no imitators, writes in, that's their handle. I hope they show some footage of the Morgan Harper fundraiser. So we didn't take footage last night, but it's okay, Morgan's gonna come in here in just a little bit, and you'll get to see her for yourself, and she's going to be on the conversation

as well. So make sure you stay right here, JustDemocrats.com slash Morgan to help her. But by the way, I mentioned Alex Morse in the last segment, JustDemocrats.com slash Morse, M-O-R-S-E, to help him against Richard Neal. Asvaldo Charles says on Twitter, there are no checks and balances in this government. There are only checks from the donors, hashtag end the corruption. Exactly right, wolf dash pack.com. And the stone Buddha says, Jank, you nailed it.

Turned out, I tuned out as soon as Adam Schiff started his double talk. Yeah. 100%. These Democrats, they wouldn't know a real American voter if, anyway, if they ran across one. They have no idea. They've been sitting in that goddamn club for decades now. Haven't met a real person in years. All right, so a few announcements, a little bit of good news.

ShopTYT is having a sale today to celebrate the first day of fall. You're going to get a 20% discount on hoodies, my favorite, and long sleeve shirts. Go to shoptyt.com and use the promo code fall and then the number 20 at checkout. Fall 20 at checkout. Also, just a little update on old school. Old school this week is going to feature Jank Yugar and comedian, oh, by the way, Brett Ehrlich and comedian Gary Goldman. So please check that out Tuesday, September 24th.

He'll talk about his upcoming HBO special, The Great Depression, I already love it. Tune to learn more about his life, comedy, career, and more. All right. Gull in Turkish means to laugh. Oh, really? So Goul man, for a name for a comic, for a Turkish, yeah, for a Turkish American, perfect name. Okay.

Yeah. But it only works on Turkish Americans. All right, anyway, let's get to real news. We live in this crazy world where a Republican has harsher words in response to Donald Trump possibly working with a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political opponent. Bill Weld is the Republican I'm speaking of, and here he is talking about what should happen to Donald Trump if these accusations are proven. Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election,

it couldn't be clearer. And that's not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It's treason pure and simple. And the penalty for treason under the U.S. Code is death. That's the only penalty. Do you, what's the legal framework here? Have you looked into this?

What, how do you see this proceeding? Well, the legal framework is under the U.S. criminal code. The only penalty for treason is death. It's spelled out in the statute. It's well past time for this guy, in my opinion, to be colloquial, to be carted. off to save us all. Okay. Wow.

So while a Republican is saying Donald Trump should be executed, Nancy Pelosi is still writing letters. As Trump would say, letters. Norway. Yeah, she's like, oh my God, there will be grave new era of lawlessness. Oh, wow, man, I didn't know you were going to be that strong. She also said that the Democrats will enter a new phase of investigations. Oh my God, a new phase of investigations. Meanwhile, the Republicans like, let's execute the Republican president.

Well, one. And look, to be clear, when it comes to Republicans in office, they're much more concerned about their political careers than protecting the system of government we have in place here in the United States. I mean, Mitt Romney did a super mild tweet in response to the whistleblower report saying, you Here, I'll give it to you. Yeah. Look, you could argue, like, it is super mild except for the fact that it's stronger than

anything any Democrat outside of AOC has said. Correct, yeah. So it's like this is the top seat every world we live in. Anyway, he wrote, if the president asked or pressured Ukraine's president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme, critical for the facts to come out. And my point is, that's, in my opinion, super mild tweet. has already been met with so much fury by Trump supporters.

And so Romney took a real political risk in putting out a super mild tweet in response to Donald Trump. So if you're waiting on Republicans in office to hold Trump accountable, you'd be wrong. That's never going to happen. That's the reason why so many Republicans have decided to retire. They're not seeking reelection. In this case, I don't know what Romney's thinking, but I'm glad that he put that out there because it's true. I mean, this is serious. And again, his tweet is mild. It's not like I'm giving him too much credit. He's just the one of few who spoke out.

So let's just talk about motivations for one second, but then get back to the major point about the difference between two parties. So Romney has three possible motivations. One is he could actually mean it. And in the past, he has been fairly principled on these issues. Number two is he might run against Trump. I mean, that's a much smaller possibility. But if Trump goes under, Romney might run in a very crowded Republican field that'll

come late. So that's a possible motivation. And third is Romney just doesn't like Trump, okay? Because Trump has said awful, hideous things about Mitt Romney. And Weld is obviously running against Trump. I'm giving you the full context. Now having said that, the more important part is the Democrats are barely whispering against Trump.

I mean, resistance, what a hilarious joke. Whereas, if you have any Republican that opposes Trump, they immediately go way over the top of the Democrats because they know how to fight. I mean, it shows that the Democrats are exactly what we've been saying for all this time. The Democratic leadership is pathetically weak. I just love how every time we talk about weak Democratic leadership, we bring up that B-roll featuring Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer side-by-side giving that press conference. Because that's their idea of resistance.

That weak sauce performance, this, this, and, you know, the creepiness of it all, that is their idea of holding Donald Trump accountable, which is why he's emboldened to keep doing the types of things he's doing, including in eight separate, you know, communications with the leader of Ukraine, coercing and pressuring him to open and launch an investigation into Hunter Biden. Come on. Guys, just imagine this. Imagine if Pelosi said, well, it's obviously treason and the penalty for treason. is death. I can't imagine it. No, right. I literally can't imagine it. No, and if she had said it, the whole world would have exploded, like, oh my God. Meanwhile, Republicans say it casually, and it's barely news, like, well, yeah, I mean, and would

Republicans have said it about Obama? Of course, of course they would have, would they have said it about Clinton. They would have said it a thousand times about Clinton if they had done anything remotely like this. But that's because Republicans are strong and Democratic leadership is the government. leadership is the worst of the worst. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about a completely different story. I want to make sure that we keep giving you guys updates on Iran and the escalation with Iran.

So let's get to it. Iran's foreign minister was in the United States, Manhattan specifically to attend a United Nations event. And he also took some time to speak to the American press about escalating tensions between Iran and the United States. Let's take a look at the first video which features the foreign minister, Javad Zarif, talking about the United States and its relationship to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. is sending what's described as a moderate number of forces and some defensive

equipment to Saudi Arabia in the wake of this attack. How does Iran interpret that? Well, I don't think this type of posturing helps. I think what helps would be to end the war in Yemen. You think it's posturing? I think it's posturing. I think it's all going the wrong direction in addressing this issue. When the war in Yemen erupted over four years ago, we called for a ceasefire, immediate negotiations, humanitarian assistance, and a formation of a broad-based government.

Unfortunately, U.S. allies, Saudi Arabia, believed that. that they could win this war militarily within four weeks. That's why they didn't accept our offer to mediate between them and the others and to bring about a negotiated solution. Now, four and a half years after that, we see that all that military equipment that the United States provided to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, all the military logistical support that the United States and some other Western countries, provided did not help defeat a group of people, the Yemenis, who are basically cut off

from the rest of the world. So he has more to say about U.S. involvement in Yemen, but I think that the way he handles these interviews are important, because I don't know if I can think of any other politician who has calmly and effectively explained to the American people what the United States and its involvement in international wars has led to, how we're not like these innocent sitting ducks that are just trying to spread peace and love throughout the world, and then we're dealing with these evil dictators. No, our actions have led to that region of the world being destabilized, we've killed

innocent civilians, we're fighting Saudi Arabia's war for them in Yemen. I like that he's calling these things out. Now that's not to say that Iran is innocent and they're not. not guilty of any wrongdoing, but I do think that it's important for Americans to understand what the ramifications are for our own U.S. policy. And luckily, I think voters across the political spectrum are really starting to understand that, which is why even Trump supporters are very much against military action against Iran. So this is a super serious conversation about whether we're going to start a down the disastrous

war. So allow me to make a silly stylistic point. He talked so softly that for a second there, I thought the anchor was gonna fall asleep. No, I love it. Okay, she was like, will I say that again? Okay, but he, as you'll see in the later clips, speaks softly but carries a big stick, which then immediately made me think of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who speaks softly and carry a fluffy pillow.

Okay, but now it's important what he's about to say, so I want to get to that, and then And I want to make comments about who's right and wrong in this particular issue in overall context. So let's watch the next clip. 100,000 people have been killed over 2 million cases of cholera in Yemen. Now everybody is concerned about an attack on an oil refinery, which based on the latest information that I have didn't even have a single casualty, 100,000 innocent human beings not enough, a refinery is an imminent threat.

This is, I mean, I think the moral compass is totally lost. So the context here is, yes, what Saudi Arabia has done in Yemen is infinitely worse than any bombing of an oil refinery. They're both bad, and we don't know who did the bombing of the oil refinery, but we do know who did the atrocities in Yemen, that's Saudi Arabia, unfortunately with the assistance of the United States of America. By the way, Iran did not attack Iraq, we attacked Iraq. Iran did not attack Afghanistan, we attacked Afghanistan.

Same for Somalia and many other smaller incursions, but there were still military in nature and involved bombings. But most importantly, remember, Iran was attacked by Iraq when we were backing Iraq. So this happened when Saddam Hussein was in charge. And you know what Saddam did? With our implicit consent, he used chemical weapons against Iran. So Iran then says, wait, you had your ally attack me with chemical weapons, and you've started endless wars in the Middle East, including the one in Yemen that you're helping

the Saudis with. And were the violent ones? I mean, that's a bit of a joke. And if you were objective about it, you would see clearly that he is right about that. It doesn't mean that Iran doesn't fund Hezbollah, Hamas, et cetera, they do. But if you're talking about the more violent actor in the Middle East, it's not remotely close, it's the United States of America. So for its part, Iran still denies its involvement in allegedly attacking that oil facility

in Saudi Arabia. During the same interview, Zarif was asked, okay, well, who do you think did it? And he cited the Houthi rebels who had claimed responsibility. Now, we also know that the Houthi rebels are being supported by Iran. So in my mind, it's basically the same thing, right? But let's put that aside for a second and focus on why we are here in the first place. And it's because of Donald Trump deciding to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. There was no escalation in tension until Trump decided to do that.

And so Zarif was asked, well, are you willing to go back to the drawing board, go back to the table and have a discussion and negotiation for a new deal? And here's what he had to say. You said yourself that you were invited into the Oval Office to meet the President Trump. Yeah, but to meet him for what, for a photo opportunity or to meet him for some substance. So when the president says he's willing to meet and talk, you're not taking it seriously at all. We're ready to talk. We're ready to talk, but talk in terms of something that is not going to be valid only for the next one and a half year or five and a half years. We need to talk about something that is permanent that would last. We already have a

an agreement. We talked. I have talked to what was a United States Secretary of State and the United States Secretary of Energy for hours upon hours of painful negotiations. These were difficult negotiations. It wasn't just a two-page document that we signed so that we could do another two-page document. So you're saying you will not meet or talk or consider diplomatic negotiations with the United States unless The acceptance of that old deal, the JCPOA, is agreed to. It's a deal that exists now. There is a negotiating room. There is a negotiating table.

I wonder if Zareef, sorry, I wonder if Zareef would be willing to go back to the drawing board. If the outcome is the same deal, but Trump would get to say that he's the one who negotiated this deal as opposed to Obama. They would probably take that in a second, but that's not what Trump's gonna do. So look, I agree and disagree with him. I disagree with him that he about not going to the table at all as annoying, ridiculous as it is that Trump ripped up the deal. It's a new administration, so you've got to deal with that. On the other hand, well, what he's saying is does America's word mean anything?

So we already negotiated this deal with an earlier administration. So do we have to renegotiate every deal every four years? And does every country that ever deals with America have to renegotiate every. deal every four years, because America's word is supposed to mean something beyond administrations. So that is a very fair point. And so I know they're not going to give them the same deal. And so will the negotiations be pointless? Very likely.

But at the same time, I always am in favor of negotiations over the alternative. So I disagree with you on that point, because if you put yourself in the shoes of Zarif or a government official in Iran, I mean, why are you going to give into this? Why are you going to, you've already gone through that painful process of negotiating a nuclear deal. Their nuclear deal was great. It had the safeguards in place. It had a timeline in place.

It had the ability for other countries to go in and confirm that they're following through with their part of the deal. And so if you give into this and you allow for more negotiations and you can see, more to the United States, well then that opens the door for this to happen over and over again. I hear you, but just going to negotiations doesn't mean you have to concede anything. It just means that you're having those conversations and what does that do? That delays military action.

Look, Iran is also playing a dangerous game here. Now they didn't start it, Trump started it, but look, it's true that Trump called back that the bomb bombing of Iran's facilities 10 minutes before it was set to go. There's a long New York Times article confirming that over the weekend, really interesting read. And so Bolton and Pompeo had convinced them to go to basically to go to war with Iran and to start that war. And he pulled it back. That was a great decision, but it was this close, this close.

So if Iran goes to the negotiation table, they could probably stretch it out for a year until the guy's out of office. If they don't go to the negotiation table, the Bolton's of the world, even though he himself has gone from the administration, will keep prodding Trump over and over again. You're gonna be weak, you're weak, you better attack them. And what Zaref is saying, which is also a dangerous game, is there is no limited attacks. If you bomb us, it's all out war. Yeah, let me give you his exact quote.

This is according to Politico, asked if he were confident Iran would avoid a war, Zerif said, quote, I'm confident that we will not start. one, but I'm confident that whoever starts one will not be the one who finishes it. Now, while we might have military capability that's unmatched, remember that Iran's military is not the same as Iraq's, for instance. They have far greater military capability, and we certainly did not win the war in Iraq. We're still involved in that war. And so it would be a disastrous decision for Donald Trump to escalate to the point of military

action. And I'll give you the other quote I was referring to, as Zerif said, that means there won't be a limited war. If Saudi Arabia or the U.S. does strikes inside Iran, he said it will be, quote, an all-out war. And if that's the case, that is disaster for America and for the world, the stupid neocons have basically, as usual, duped the media into not explaining the full consequences. Iran has enough military capability to do significant damage to our forces in their region, okay? I don't know that they're going to reach here, but I'd be surprised if they didn't sink several of our ships, and we haven't had a ship sunk in a long time.

If they sink an aircraft carrier, this country's going to go nuts. And then we're going to be in the middle of a war like you haven't seen, and Iraq war is going to look like child's play. And so if I, now that's going to hurt America, it's going to hurt everybody, but it's also going to devastate Iran. So if I was Iranians, I'd be like, oh, Donald, do you want to talk? Yeah, of course, come over, let's have some kubit kibabaab. Let's take a while, okay, let's have some appetizers, et cetera, right?

Let's think about a year and see how that goes. Avoid the war at all costs. The kubita kebab needs to be well done with ketchup though. Thereby ruining it, but yes. All right, we got to take a break and we have an awesome guest coming up when we return. Yeah, Morgan Harper, Justice is coming. 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.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.