The Young Turks - Trump Goes After His Own Admin And More Secret Meetings With Putin Discovered

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Trump went after the US Intelligence community after they disagreed with his statements. Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 Summit with NO other Americans present. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Chirk, what's up? Jake Uyghur, Anna Kasparian. That what's up came out a little weird, isn't it? It did. It was also weird that you're about to call me J.R. Jackson. What do you mean? Oh, it sounded like you're about to say. Really?

Yuga, Anna Kasparian. Wow, that's super weird. Yeah. Okay. Lots of weird beginnings in today's show. We do look alike to be there. I'm Ugar, son of Ugar. That's the last kingdom reference.

All right. So, look guys, we got an amazing. It's an amazing show for you today. Trump goes a war with our own government, as usual, but it's his own administration, the intelligence officials, we'll get to that in a second. Did Trump commit treason? I don't know. People are talking, including Trump and Putin secretly.

Oh, for Christ's sake, okay, an amazing story about that. That's coming up in a little bit. So great, great show. Oh, and do not, do not miss the war between. Elizabeth Warren and Howard Schultz. Oh, totally my favesy story. Yes, and I don't know if Howie knows that they call her Warren G. Okay, so anyways, but I do also want to tell you about what's coming up within the week,

okay? So first off, tomorrow, second hours for just for members, last time in January, well, it's the last day in January, so that makes sense. But don't worry, you can get it for free if you try out membership for a week. That's free for a week, t.com slash trial, okay? So that's for tomorrow. But also for tomorrow, this is really important. We're gonna have a guest on Rebel Headquarters at 8.05 p.m. Eastern.

That is going to make some news about the 2020 campaign. Poo p.p.p.p.p.p.p. Yeah, interesting. I'm not saying anything except for the words I've just said. So definitely check that out. And then next Tuesday, State of the Union, free and available for everyone, a little extra analysis for the members as always. So t.t.com slash join and become member or like we said, t yt.com slash trial to try it free for a week.

Okay, so lots of amazing things coming up in the next week. Oh, by the way, oh sorry, one last thing, guys. The game whose name cannot be mentioned that happens on Sunday and that's fairly large. We're gonna watch it along with you guys. If you want us as a second screen and see our reactions to the plays, et cetera, we've been doing that for a long time on the Young Turks. made probably around 15 years or so when Dave Kohler first brought his laptop to Ben Manquitz's house while we're watching the game.

So that's also free and available to everyone in the beginning, t.yt.com slash live. It starts at 3 o'clock Pacific, so 6 o'clock Eastern on Sunday. Watch that game along with all the folks from here, me, Ben, JR, so many others will be here. Do you watch Anna, I think you're coming as well? I will be there, yes. Okay, so that'll be fun. So it's like a family atmosphere, I think you guys would love that. All right, what's next, Anna?

All right. Donald Trump is sparring with the U.S. intelligence community, yes, his own intelligence community. And this is following the recent assessment that was put out to essentially report what the major threats are to U.S. national security. Now, we talked about it on yesterday's show, but just to quickly summarize the findings of the report. Number one, a border wall was not really mentioned. That was not considered one of the primary threats to be concerned about.

However, Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. They are still following along with a 2015 nuclear deal, even though Donald Trump has pulled out of it and has implemented sanctions against Iran. Russia and China are actually more aligned and do pose cyber security threats. They are specifically targeting our electric grid and also the 2020 election. North Korea is unlikely to give up nuclear stockpiles, and ISIS continues to stoke violence in Syria. Now, to be fair, ISIS has lost a lot of ground in Syria and in Iraq, but the intelligence

report essentially says that ISIS has not been wiped out as a threat. They still pose some level of threat in Syria. So, Anna, at first I thought you were saying that Trump was at war with his own intelligence, which also makes sense, because he is at times said, you know, like a smart person. What, in reality, he knows he's not. So there's a little bit of a conflict there as well. And it's a good catch that they didn't mention the wall. I didn't notice that because of course the wall has nothing to do with national security or

almost nothing to do with it. So it didn't even occur to me. But it didn't occur to the national security folks either, because it's not, compared to the other issues is a tiny, tiny issue. And one that has not gotten any worse over the last couple of decades. In fact, now less people coming in through the border with Mexico. All right, so on the substance of how you should interpret these findings. So look, there's a couple of different camps and I don't think we're in either one of them.

So one of the camps is these intelligence officials are demigods, they know everything, and you should bow your head to them and accept all their findings. And then there's the other camp, which is the Trump camp, which is they don't know what they're talking about. Kim Jong-un told me we're gonna have a strong deal and they're not going to do the nuclear anymore. Okay. So neither one of those is correct.

But where do you go on that scale of credibility for the intelligence officials? And so a lot of progressives and just thinking rational people go, wait a minute, I remember these guys getting a pretty wrong in Iraq to say the least. So I'm not ready to jump all in and say what they say is, is a threat and what isn't. Yeah. Yeah, it's 100% credible or not, right? So, well, you could tell in the details, right? And first the context, then the details of this particular report.

The context is, remember that in Iraq war, it wasn't that the intelligence officials had no idea what they were doing, and they all thought that there was weapons of mass destruction, and they all thought that Saddam had attacked us along with al-Qaeda. No, that intelligence was greatly cherry-picked by the administration. So there's the intelligence reports, and then there's what the administration does with it, right? So in reality, intelligence officials very clearly said the Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9-11, but Dick Cheney and George Bush came out and implied that anyway, and then the media did a terrible job of going along with that talking point.

On the weapons of mass destruction, they were mixed, and Dick Cheney took the parts that he liked and said, yaha, right? And buried the parts he didn't like. So it's not quite fair to put that all on the intelligence. But do they lean a little bit more towards being cautious throughout the world about national security? And hence a little bit more warlike, hey, you know, hey, we gotta be careful, let's keep fighting ISIS, et cetera, yes. So they have a thumb on the scale probably unwittingly being more hawkish.

The only thing that I saw from this report that raised a few questions for me, a few red flags, was the analysis on what's happening in Syria and Iraq in regard to ISIS. Because there is this consensus among Washington elite and the intelligence community that pulling out of Syria is a bad idea. That's something that Trump has decided to do. And it's one of the few things that Republicans in Congress actually stood up to Trump on. This country loves war. But I think what gives this report credibility is the honesty in what's going on with Iran.

100% right. I totally agree. And I actually find this report more credible than almost any of the reports I've seen in the last 20 years. Because in this particular case, the rest of the establishment, even I would say the media, et cetera, and certainly the neoconservists, which usually dominate in this arena, are are against Iran, so they agitate towards more conflict with Iran, so they will cherry pick any slight evidence to say, well, I mean, there was a gun in Iran, so they have

a weapons program, they're a weapons program. I'm exaggerating, but not by much, okay? So in this case, though, the report was like, no, no, they're complying. They're complying with the agreement, even though we pulled out of it. So that is, in this context, it's extraordinarily honest. And so that buys them credibility on the other issues. Absolutely. Now, of course, most of what this report indicates about our real threats conflicts with what

Trump believes. So I'm gonna give you this awesome video that shows you what Trump says, and then what the National Intelligence Director Dan Coates says as he is participating in a hearing about the findings of this report. Take a look. We have one against ISIS. We've beaten them and we've beaten them badly. ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Chairman Kim, we have a great chemistry and we're well in our way. You know, we signed an agreement. It said we will begin the immediate denuclearization. North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities. I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. Not only if the Russians continued to do it in 2018, but we've seen an indication that they're continuing to adapt their model. So CNN did a good job juxtaposing, you know, Trump's, you know, statements with what the intelligence report finds.

Now, guys, even if you're MAGA, you know the reality. Who do you think is more likely to be telling the truth? Donald Trump, who contradicts himself and lies about 18 times a day, or the serious professionals who look into this and actually have an incentive to, if any incentive at all, it would be to be more hawkish, right? And yet on issues like Iran, they're not. And so, and by the way, in some of the issues they would tend to, hey, look, there's no need for conflict there.

And on other issues, they say, no, we need more conflict. That balance shows you that they're actually looking at the intelligence. as opposed to having preconceived notions. So you know that. And by the way, if you don't know the FBI director and the director of national intelligence are both Republicans. And Dan Coates, who's the director of national intelligence, is a very right-wing Republican. So it's not like he has any incentive to disagree with Donald Trump and to contradict

what he's saying. And he was picked by Donald Trump, if anything, he has an incentive to agree with Donald Trump, but he just can't, because that's not true. In fact, when pressed on some other issues, including Russia, he said we should discuss that behind closed doors, which I found to be very interesting. Absolutely. So a few other things I want to mention. I thought it was interesting how the report also went into some of Trump's economic

policies and how that poses a threat because of the alliances that we're now seeing internationally. So according to the report, American trade policies and unilateralism, meaning unilateral unilateralism by Trump have strained traditional alliances and prompted foreign partners to seek new relationships. And so, you know, we talked about this a little bit previously in regard to the trade war. All of a sudden you're seeing Mexico doing business with China, you know, they're forming an alliance there, which means even when the trade war is over, American businesses will be hurt because, well, someone else has taken their place.

And so it would be much harder to, you know, create that business relationship. Again, also activity in North Korea that is inconsistent with full denuclearization and most of what North Korea has dismantled is reversible. So the point here is, okay, look, it's good that we've taken a more diplomatic approach to North Korea, but it has not denuclearized. And whatever little progress we've seen with there, denuclearization is easily reversible. So that was the point there. Now in response to this entire report, of course Trump had a meltdown on Twitter, so I wanted

to share some of that response with you. Let's go to Graphic 5. He says, this is my favorite tweet. The intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong. When I became president, Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran nuclear deal, they are much different.

But what? No, they're not much different. They're literally still following the terms of that deal, even though you've imposed those sanctions. How much to, how? How do you mean? So they're not causing any other problems internationally anymore? No, it's of course, as I alluded to earlier, contradictory, because everything he says is weirdly contradictory.

Why? His motivations are to say, I'm tough on Iran, so Iran now knows their role and is being compliant with me because I'm so strong. On the other hand, I'd like to start more conflict with them, so they're causing trouble and I won't stand for it. So which one is it? Are they being compliant or causing trouble? Well, you can't have both, but he wants both, so he just says it.

No, okay, so that was the first part of the tweet. Here's the second part. Remember, he said they are acting much different, okay. So then he says, but a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing rockets last week and more, and are coming very close to the edge. The economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps intelligence should go back to school.

Perhaps you should go back to school. I'd love to see your transcripts. This moron couldn't have gotten past the D on any class at all. He can't read past the page, okay? His daddy got him into Wharton, he's a total failure talking about going back to school. You know that he wanted Obama's transcripts from Columbia and Harvard? Because he couldn't believe, why, why? That a black man got into those schools and got good grades.

Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review. That means he was among the very best students at Harvard Law while he was there. So it's not like, oh, he got into affirmative action or any of that kind of stuff. He proved himself within the law school, right? But Trump got his daddy to get him from Fordham to Wharton and has never released any of his transcripts because they would be mortifying, because he's an absolute and utter fool. So that school thing just drives me crazy.

Now, like I said, there's no consistency at all. I'm so tough on the road, that's why they're complying, but they're not complying so we might have to attack. You see how intelligence doesn't know anything? I figured it all out. They should go back to school. Just a total fool. Look, things are devolving for him.

And so, and this story is part of it. Now you see just in the last 24 hours, Chris Christie coming out and taking a lot more pot shots at him, okay? Chris Christie was the idiot who was standing behind him after dropping out of the race, going, okay Donald, what do I do? What do I do? And for two whole years, he's still been quietly playing for a position. He's not playing for a position anymore.

Why the ship is sinking and the rats sense it. Steve Bannis, speaking of rats, just came out and started criticizing Donald Trump. Oh, interesting. And now Dan Coates, the intelligence officials, et cetera, like no, nope, the president, that's That's not true, these are the, this is the reality. Oh, Russia, we gotta talk about that behind closed doors. No, no, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, he's in way more trouble than he realizes. Well, let's talk a little bit more about Russia because the Financial Times published a piece

today that I think is important to discuss. Earlier, the Washington Post broke news that Donald Trump had a number of private meetings with Vladimir Putin without any else on the American side in the room. No aides, no interpreter, no one who could basically make a record of the conversation that was taking place or the conversations that were taking place. Now we find through a report by Financial Times that Donald Trump also had a meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires at the tail end of the G20 summit. Now this was last year in November, according to Financial Times, the White House has acknowledged

the two leaders met in Buenos Aires. after Trump canceled former bilateral talks following Russia's November attack on three Ukrainian naval vessels. So Trump was in essence forced to cancel that meeting because of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine. But he still met with Putin and he did it behind closed doors without a US aid with him, without anyone taking record or taking note of the conversation taking place. According to a Russian government officials account, the two leaders spoke for about 15 minutes

about a number of foreign policy issues, including the Azov Sea incident, which is what I was referring to earlier, and the conflict in Syria. They also discussed when they would have a formal meeting. So the timing here is important, because this 15-minute private meeting happened in November, and then Donald Trump announced that he was going to pull troops, American troops, out of Syria around December 19th. This is all in 2018. I just think that timeline matters.

We'll see. Yeah, so timing matters on a couple other issues too, but that's a great point by Anna. So we were all wondering why is he pulling out of Syria in a panic, all of a sudden immediately before he was like, oh, maybe, and the generals were trying to talk him out of it, and then all of a sudden he comes out and says, no, no, we're going to get into Syria right now, almost as if he got orders, and that's not us saying it now, we said it at the time. Look, we want him to come out of Syria, but we said the way that he did it was. was very curious.

And now this timing gives you some clue as to, and back then we were having a discussion about he had a conversation with Turkey, Russia wants us to withdraw, what were the possible motivations? Now this leads more towards Russia than Turkey or any of the other motivations, but it's just one data point. Okay. Now the other curious timing things. So he had said, well, I'm canceling the November meeting with Putin because of what

happened with the naval ships that Anna told you about. And then after that, he has this secret meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires when they're at the G20 together. Okay, well, you don't need the formal meeting if you're gonna have an informal meeting. So it turns out you canceling the formal meeting was just a show, was to pretend you were being tough on Russia, but in reality you snuck around and was like, okay, Vladimir, what do you want, what do you want? Okay, so don't pretend you're a tough guy and you cancel talks when you went and had a secret

talk with him anyway. Point number two on that same issue is when you have formal talks, well, then that is when the U.S. at least has a translator and you're supposed to have AIDS in the room with you, staff in the room with you to take notes, to make sure there's no misunderstandings and that we follow through on what we said. Now, Trump in the past has not done that on occasions because he didn't want anyone on the American side knowing what he's talking to Putin about. In this case, since it's not a formal meeting, he's like, oh, well, the translator didn't happen to be here.

I had to just use the Russian translator that Vladimir brought. And Melania, and that's a curious, different thing, okay? And so it's very convenient not to have a formal meeting, but an informal one where only the Russians are present and Trump, because then he has no witnesses. You know who tries to avoid witnesses, criminals? So we're not the only ones that are concerned about what took place during that close-door private meeting. In fact, National Intelligence Director Dan Coates was asked about this recently, and here was

his reaction. Donald Trump met privately with Vladimir Putin, and no one in the U.S. government has the full story about what was discussed. Director Haspel and Director Coates, would this put you in a disadvantaged position? in terms of understanding Russia's efforts to advance its agenda against the United States? This is a sensitive issue, and it's an issue we ought to talk about this afternoon. I look forward to discussing that in a closed session. In other words, I don't want to say publicly how much Trump has damaged us by not allowing any other Americans to hear what he's saying to a foreign adversary.

and to not even have a translator from our side. So I don't know what Dan Coates said in the closed door hearing, but he thought it was an important and sensitive issue that the public shouldn't know about yet. So that is very telling. It's also very telling when you don't. Look, if I'm going to deal with anybody else, I want my own translator in a business meeting, let alone if I'm the American president. And why wouldn't I want my own translator?

Why would I trust the Russian translator? What a weird thing to do unless you're absolutely insistent that there be no witnesses. And so, and remember in previous cases, he has also told the translator not to come into the room with Putin. And in one instance, he came out of a meeting and took the translator's notes. Right. And said, do not talk about the meeting. And do not ever talk about this meeting.

Right. Come on, you know who tries no board witnesses. You know that. If you're breaking the law, you don't want any witnesses. All right, by the way, I don't know what Melania's role is and now there's a lot of speculation online. I'm not going to get into that. But I do know that he has put her in legal jeopardy by having her attend that meeting.

So I mean, she doesn't have to speak Russian because the translator is presumably translating obviously back into English so Trump can understand. So Melania can hear everything that's being said, now she's in legal jeopardy for that is such a foolish thing to do. I know, but you're, I don't think you're assuming, but he doesn't care about the people around him and what kind of legal jeopardy he puts them in. I mean, think about the number of people associated with Donald Trump who have already faced the legal ramifications of being associated with someone like him.

Yeah, last two things here. One is also about timing, but in a different kind of. context, the timing of how long the meeting took. Trump said the meeting was very brief and it was just like, you know, no cordial greetings at the summit as he would do with any other leader. The Argentinian press said, no, that is not true. The meeting, they sat down and the meeting took some time, definitely over 10 minutes. Now people from our administration, the US administration, are saying, no, the meeting took at

least 15 minutes. Trump was not telling the truth about how brief it was. Gee, I wonder why you would lie about how substantive the meeting was that you didn't want anyone else to witness. Look, I don't care if you're on the right wing or the left wing. If you can't see that this guy's trying to hide some relationship with Russia, you're being purposely obtuse. So if you want to deny reality for whatever political reason that you have, that's your choice.

But every other rational person in the world can see that Trump has some deal with the Russians that he doesn't want anyone else to hear about. Let's take a break. When we come back, we are going to give you an update on what's happening in Venezuela. Nicholas Maduro has responded to Donald Trump, and it appears that he is willing to negotiate with opposition. We'll give you that and more when we return. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing 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. powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it.

The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. I love our audience, John Brugliera on Twitter caught something that we missed. Did you happen to notice he says that in Trump's intelligence tweet he uses there as in T-H-E instead of there as in they, apostrophe, who needs to go back to school?

I know, but I actually did catch that, but I didn't harp on it because it's Trump. Like it's so commonplace in his tweets that I feel like it's cliche to bring it up. If Obama had made one mistake. I know, I know. I mean, he's normalizing bad grammar. Yeah, I mean, when you say that other people don't have intelligence and they should go back to school, that is when it is incumbent upon you not to misspell things. Yeah.

Okay. And so don't get me started on global whaming. That boy's hell on Turlitz says, I challenge Trump to find Iran on a map. Oh, how great would that be if a reporter did that? They'd be like, oh, that's a gotcha question. He's the president, man, for Christ's sake, right? It's nearly inconceivable that he would find it. Nacho Mamo says, Jenk, please don't tease us with the announcement for tomorrow.

Now I want to call us sick from work tomorrow. Hashtag Bernie 2020. No, no, look, I'm not saying anything. All right, don't get too too excited. It's a great, great announcement, but you don't need to call out sick from work. Okay, so tomorrow night, 8.05 p.m. Eastern, we do have an exciting campaign development that we will share with you guys with a guest that we've got on. All right.

The conflict with Venezuela continues. In fact, the State Department has issued a travel warning to Americans, urging them to avoid any and all travel to Venezuela. In fact, the advisory says the following, do not travel to Venezuela due to crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, and arbitrary arrest and detention of U.S. citizens. Venezuelan authorities may not notify the U.S. Embassy of the detention of a U.S. citizen, and consular access to detainees may be denied or severely delayed. I'm glad that they issued this because I do believe that it's correct.

Nicholas Maduro is going to want to retaliate against Donald Trump. The Trump administration has just implemented sanctions against Venezuela, specifically their oil company, their state-owned oil company. And so would he want to retaliate against Americans? Sure, I don't think it's far-fetched to think so. But the situation is devolving rather quickly, and there is some fear that there could be military intervention, especially since both Bolton and Trump have said that military intervention is on the table.

And Bolton was caught with a note on his notepad that said 5,000 troops to Colombia. That sounds ominous. You know, Bolton's a sneaky dude with a very sneaky mustache. I wonder if he wrote that and then had it facing out on purpose so the press could see it as a threat. But it's not important in speculation either way. But obviously them saying, yeah, no, no, we're considering military options is important because that's crazy.

What are we going to do, invade Venezuela? So, but it's Trump and Bolton, you never know, buckle up. Now the good news is the Russians are on Venezuela's side, so why is that good news? Because Trump might get a call suit and go, I meant Venezuela is actually kind of awesome. I don't, did I say I don't like Maduro? I mean, hey, dude, dude won an election. Okay, which by the way, is not necessarily the case. No, yeah, he, it was a rigged election, that's clear.

But, you know, Donald Trump and, you know, various countries, it's not just the United, the United States, refused to recognize Nicholas Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. And they are now noting that the opposition or the opposer, Juan Guido, is the real president of Venezuela. Look, they're pushing for regime change, and every time I see that, I get incredibly uneasy. Yes, I acknowledge that Nicholas Maduro is a bad guy, but any time there's a push for regime change from outside forces, especially outside forces who oftentimes are influenced by business interests, you're going to have a disastrous situation. So it makes me uneasy, and at the same time, I recognize what the Venezuelan people are going through.

And by the way, yeah, Nicholas Maduro might have not gotten elected democratically or fairly, but neither did Juan Guido. Yeah. So look, if you came up with a solution, the world did, all the international community did, and right now the international community is split. So on the side of Venezuela and Russia is also China, Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, et cetera. So that's on the Maduro side saying, no, Guido is not the elected leader of Venezuela. as well.

But if the world were to be united and they decided, hey, look, let's have new elections, let's monitor them either Jimmy Carter's organization or the United Nations or maybe Mexico or Uruguay, right? I would love that. I think that would be the perfect answer to this, because I don't believe that Maduro was democratically elected. But we know for a fact, Guido isn't. We know for a fact that he's influenced by foreign actors, including the United States, who he coordinated

his announcement with. Donald Trump tweeted minutes after Guides said that he was the real leader of Venezuela. Now the U.S. has said, oh, Guido will get to control the assets of Venezuela that is in U.S. banks. I think that's outrageous. So I'm not interested in another coup. So you've got a series of bad choices here. The only good choice, the one I just outlined with doing another election that's actually

fair and monitored. Now, it's going to be incredibly difficult to get with doing. to agree to that, so I understand that and acknowledge that. But of all the other options, which are all bad, I think the worst one is a de facto coup, where we have a total mess and risk civil war within Venezuela, and the military continues to back Maduro, but what if the military was split? And then we're gonna have another situation like Syria, Iraq, et cetera, on our hands. And gee, it's another country in the world that happens to have a lot of oil that

that all of a sudden we're meddling in their elections. Now wait, I thought we were against meddling in elections. Now we're principled here on the young Turks, we're against the Russians' meddling in our elections, but we're also against us meddling in Venezuelan elections. Yeah, exactly. And remember, the U.S. has been attempting to do a coup on Venezuela since 2002. There was a failed coup back in 2002, and it was U.S. backed. And that was when Hugo Chavez was the president.

So, again, there have been business interests involved. Whatever there are these outside influencers trying to come in and do something like regime change, you gotta ask yourself why. If they give you the answer of human rights, you gotta ask yourself, okay, well, what other alliances do you have? And if you're doing business with Saudi Arabia, and if you're killing civilians in Yemen to basically carry out Saudi Arabia's war, well, then you really have no like to stand on when it comes to human rights.

You don't really care about human rights. Yeah, and I'll say two more things about it. One is in Honduras, we supported a coup that put in a right-wing government that human rights abuses are far worse. The loving government did not have human rights abuses. It was actually standing up for the people of Honduras. The right-wing government has been terrible on human rights abuses, and we're absolutely love it.

So spare me your crocodile tears on human rights abuses. We actually care about the human rights abuses in Venezuela, and Maduro has done them, and so that is why we are deeply conflicted about what to do in a very different difficult situation. But when Trump tells me he cares about human rights abuses, please, since such an obvious and brazen lie, which brings me to point number two, oh, you care about elections that aren't real. You know that your big buddy over there, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, also says that he's the rightful

leader of the people of North Korea. We have good chemistry, Jake, we have good chemistry. Yeah, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, where's the elections? They're massive human rights abuses. The worst in the world, sham elections or no elections, and you don't give a damn, one, they're your allies. I mean, why is it? Two, you think you're gonna make a great deal with them and it's gonna help your ego.

And three, North Korea doesn't have oil and Saudi Arabia lets us get their oil for free, not free obviously, but cheap, right? But Venezuela wants to actually control their own oil, all of a sudden, oh my God, elections, Elections! Elections! And you're, you know, buddy buddies with Kim Jong-un and Mohammed bin Bonesaw? Right. So please, please. What a load of horse crap. Yeah. A U.S.-based journalist was murdered and dismembered by Saudi Arabian royals and he did nothing about it. He tried to cover for it. So the whole human rights abuses thing is ridiculous. I want to move on to another part of the story, though. Following U.S. tensions with Venezuela, the Venezuelan president came out with a statement

about Donald Trump. So here's what Nicholas Maduro had to say. Donald Trump gave the order to kill me, told the Colombian government, the Colombian mafia to kill me. If something happens to me once, Donald Trump and Colombian president duke will be responsible for everything, what happens to me? He also says, though, and this is important, and I don't. know how serious he is about it, but it does show that he is maybe caving a little bit

to pressure. I'm willing to sit down for talks with the opposition so we could talk for the sake of Venezuela's peace and its future. Now, the United States has just implemented sanctions on its oil company, and there is a lot of worry that there could be U.S. military intervention in Venezuela as well. Those could be the factors influencing Maduro to possibly negotiate with his opponents. But either way, this talk is different from what we heard from Maduro previously. Yeah, I do believe that.

And this is also difficult and has two sides to it. So on the one hand, is Maduro willing to negotiate with the other side, which is a good thing, by the way. So I think the other side is saying that they're the leaders of Venezuela as absurd, and It is a de facto coup, but Maduro has his own set of problems, and there are two legitimate sides in terms of the actual citizens of Venezuela, and they should negotiate. So is Maduro being pressure to negotiate, which is good? Yes.

So is the sanctions a big part of that? Yes, the oil money there is about $11 billion, so that's no joke. And already the Venezuelan economy is in terrible shape. and sanctions from the US were their number one partner, trade partner in terms of their crude oil. So that would be further devastating to them. On the other hand, so when we target a country, we usually start doing sanctions and start to crush their economy, then turn around and go, look at their bad economy, I can't believe it.

Look at these people, they don't know, they're trying to keep their oil for themselves instead of letting ExxonMobil have it. And look, they can't manage their economy at all. Obviously you have to privatize everything in the country and give it to American companies. So given that history, I am less likely to support sanctions. So again, Venezuela, no easy choices here. I'm glad Maduro's coming to the table a little bit more, but I do not support the coup. I do not overall support the sanctions, because the one thing we are absolutely positive

about is that it will further crush the people of Venezuela, no matter which side they're on. Exactly. But I want to give the other side of the sanctions as well, because it is important. So one of the ways that Maduro is able to maintain power in Venezuela is he's paying off the military. Pays off the military, they remain on his side, and he's able to carry out this, you know, dictatorial regime.

And so, look, my issue with the sanctions is the intentions behind it, right? What is the intention behind it? Is it because this government actually genuinely cares about the people of Venezuela and they want to squeeze him out in order to protect these people? No, that is not the intention. The intention is to open up that oil for American use, for business interests. That's the problem. And whenever that happens and whenever we go into something, whenever we try to do resume change

with the wrong intentions, usually ends up even worse for the people of that case. country. Yeah, we meddle far too much. Last piece of nuance in context here on sanctions, I'm not saying I'm a blanket against all sanctions. It greatly depends. So for example, sanctions did not work in Iraq because there was a dictator in charge during Saddam Hussein's time. And he didn't care what happened to his people.

And so he had plenty of money and it didn't bother him at all. And so all it did was further crush the people of Iraq that were already suffering. On the other hand, sanctions in South Africa worked brilliantly, and economic pressure overall does work. So you just have to know the right context. Why did it work in South Africa? Why did it work in the uprising in Egypt when there was massive labor strikes, economic pressure of a different sort?

It's because when you have a set of people instead of just one dictator in charge, and it affects all of their economic interests, they then put pressure on that leader to make a difference. In this case, the military guys do have influence there, very important influence. And as Anna pointed out, they make a lot of money from Maduro. But if that money is now getting hurt, they can then put pressure on Maduro. So sanctions do have some chance of working here. On the other hand, it's at the expense of the Venezuelan people. And the intent in this case is not to do something like getting a dictator like Mubarak

out of office or end apartheid. It is a bad intent, which is to really help American companies in Donald Trump's interest and to help a coup rather than give the desperately needed aid and comfort to the people of Venezuela. Exactly. All right, we're gonna take a break, and when we come back, we're gonna come back to the United States, talk about what Democrats are doing to restore voting rights and how Republicans are fighting them.

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All right, back on a young turks, lots of fun comments. Let's go to Twitter first. Karen Curley says, and I don't know if she's referring to Maduro or Trump or both. I take both here, and I think it does apply. These quote-unquote strong men spend a lot of time screaming, crying, and hiding. Oh, for sure. Yes. Isn't it?

And then I like this tweet on two grounds. One is the title of the Twitter handle, and then the second is the substance. The Twitter handle is aggressive, moral populist Kamala is a cop. Okay, Ida was saying that the other day when she was in here. She's like, you know what Kamala Harris is? Police. Ida gets it. That's it.

Anyway. So that person wrote in, Baltimore to no longer prosecute people for marijuana possession and other important non-Trump's story. Thank you for pointing that out. It's a wonderful story. Hey, look at that. Prosecutors using discretion to incarcerate less people rather than more people, apparently that's possible.

And Sasha Ray writes in the member section, we're entering the 40th year of sanctions on Iran. I'm sure they'll democratize real soon. Right. So yes, there are situations where sanctions totally do not work, and Iran is another good example. When you have a grand Ayatollah in charge, turns out he doesn't really care that much what happens to his people, just cares about his own pocketbook and the sanctions almost never touches the very top. All right, and one last thing for you guys, Squarespace is our partner and sponsor here, and

they bring your stories to life online. Basically if you're building a website, a blog, a portfolio, which almost everybody needs now, whether you're applying for a job or you have your own business or any of those situations, you need to go to Squarespace. In this case, go to Squarespace.com slash TYT and get 10% off or you could use TYT as a promo code. So if you're going to set up a website, you should definitely do it with them. They have great support. I did it, Anna did it. So make sure you use TYT to get 10% off. Okay, what's next, Anna? Every time you do that promo, I think about how I need to update my website and how I still haven't done it.

You know, it's really easy through Squarespace. It is, it's so easy, but like, I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to spend a bunch of time thinking about what I've done. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to go home after work and be like, what did I do that I want to let everyone know about? Like, how can I promote myself? Like, it's the hardest thing for me to do.

Anyway, let's move on. Yeah, we could talk more about it in a post game, but I hear you sister. All right. Okay. That would have to interrupt our otherwise important post games from this week, including an intellectual discussion of Gullum versus Schmeagle. Yes, it was so much fun. It was. T.wit.com slash join to become a member and get the postgame.

All right, what's next, Dana? All right. Democrats and Republicans are debating over H.R. 1. Now, this is the House Judiciary Committee, and they're debating the merit of this legislation, which would essentially make it easier for Americans to vote. in our country, which is supposed to have a functioning democracy or democratic process. Now, the House Judiciary Committee held an initial hearing on H.R.1, the For the People Act focused largely on the bill's voting rights provisions. The measures aim to expand automatic voter registration, early voting, and felon re-enfranchisement. The bill also endorses

a restoration of the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance provisions that were gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. So just to give you a little more context into what the Supreme Court gutted in 2013, essentially the Voting Rights Act ensured that some of the states that were horrible to, let's say, black voters would have to go to the Justice Department and get permission before they change their voting laws. Because there was a lot of concern due to the history of this country that some of the red states, some of the southern states would purposely pass voting laws that would make it increasingly

difficult for black voters to go out there and vote. And so that's why the Justice Department was supposed to be involved in that. Yeah. So first of all, HR1's a great bill. When it comes to campaign finance reform, I always want more. So I wish we could end all private financing elections, and then we will, we'll get a constitutional amendment to do that. This does not do that yet, but it has a number of wonderful provisions.

that allows more people to vote. That should be no-brainer if you believe in democracy. But of course, Republicans historically do not want more people to vote. And if you're wondering why, because higher percentages of the wealthy and people who are more likely to vote Republican vote in greater numbers. So those people already vote, so they don't want middle class and poor people who don't vote as often to join the voting ranks, they don't want the young that don't vote as often to join the voting ranks, and they certainly don't want minorities who historically don't

vote in the same percentages to become voters as well, because they're all more likely to be Democratic voters, plus they're minorities and young people and all other people that Republicans don't care about. Right, and so instead of maybe caring about them and realizing, hey, maybe we should propose policies that look out for everyone, not just the wealthy, not just, you know, the people who have been placed in places of privilege in this country. They think, no, we don't want to serve them. Why don't we go ahead and make it increasingly difficult for them to vote?

That way we don't have to worry about them as a constituency. So among the different things that they debated in this particular resolution, the Republicans have some things that I disagree with, and I'll explain that, and other things that are really not arguable, so they're forced to, as usual, lie about them. So what's a legitimate thing to disagree about, even though most of the country is seemingly weighed in on it? And by most of the country, I mean, it's just bipartisan, not necessarily that every state participated in these kind of ballot measures.

So the arguable one is, should felons have voting rights? Now, I absolutely think they should. In Florida, when there was a ballot measure, it passed overwhelmingly with both Democratic and Republican support. There are Republican governors in places in the middle of the country that are saying, yes, we think that felons should regain their voting rights when they come out. But you could have an argument about that. Well, there were Republicans who wanted to have that argument.

So I'm gonna go to Representative Gates, and he listed all the reasons why he believes that people who were convicted of felonies should not be allowed to vote. I guess to Ms. Gupta, you say that your organization believes that we ought to restore automatically. The voting rights of people who've engaged in felonious conduct, Mr. Grant was convicted of a felony. When he's done with his probation and community service in time, should we allow him to vote again? The leadership conference would say yes. After people have completed their sentence and served their debt to society, the right to vote should be restored. I'm looking at Anthony Bruton. Anthony Bruton committed sex acts with a 12-year-old at knife point. Then he threatened to cut her

throat and barrier. He spent five years in prison for that offense. Would H.R. 1 have allowed Mr. Bruton to rape a 12-year-old at 9th point, move to another state, and then vote against actions that would allow that to be considered at a subsequent sentencing? This bill would allow someone like Nardo Harmon, who broke into the homes of people and raped 11-year-old victims. So he gets out of his house, breaks into somebody else's house, and rapes an 11-year-old. But if HR1 were the law, and Nardo Harmon did that, he would then be able to go vote against California Proposition 83 that would have required him to wear a GPS monitoring device. There are some things you can do that are so bad, the degradation of people's right

to vote, intimidating people from vote, raping children that probably renders your right to participate in those decisions in the future. So look, there's two parts of this. One is saying, hey, listen, I'm concerned about very serious criminals voting. on specific legislation that might affect them. I actually, again, I think it's a debatable point. There's a second part, which is demigory, which is what he's doing. That's exactly right.

Cherry picking extreme cases to make his point. So in Florida, it affected 1.4 million people. And the overwhelming majority of that are nonviolent offenders, usually things like marijuana possession, et cetera. So to put them all in the same bucket as child rapists, right, is obvious. obvious demagoguery. And so secondly, think about that example for a second. Do you think that it's, well, look, if we have that one guy who gets out of prison and moves

to a different state and votes to not monitor child rapists, that somehow that legislation isn't going to pass? Like everybody's going to be like, oh, that child rapist makes a really good point. Maybe we shouldn't monitor them, I'm going to vote, no. No, it's preposterous, right? So he's trying to take away the rights of actually millions of Americans based on the most extreme and absurd examples. Exactly.

So if he wants to do an amendment and saying, hey, you know what, I would like to exempt child rapists from this law, he can propose that amendment to this legislation. Yeah, and we're having a conversation. I agree with you that there are parts that are debatable, right? I don't think that you are unreasonable for believing that, I believe that as well. But again, he wants to paint a very specific picture on everyone who's been convicted of a crime, even though we know, through our years of sharing stories with you, that there is a huge population of people who have been convicted for nonviolent offenses like drug

possession. And by the way, civil libertarians would say, no, I get it. Some of the crimes committed, including murder, et cetera, are horrific. But that is why we have a criminal justice system. And after they have served their sentence, we have decided as a society that that is the appropriate punishment. and we're done punishing them. So that is the counterpoint to that debate.

But that would apply again to a minuscule amount of people. And so he's not trying to fix this bill in his mind, if it needs fixing. He's trying to kill the bill. And does he care about the felon voting rights? A little bit. But what he actually cares more about is, my God, it would allow more people to vote on other issues through early voting, through easier voter registration. And he hates that, because those folks might vote for Democrats.

Oh, he don't like that. Okay, so another part of this that you have to be aware of, and this is just mind-blowing to me in how utterly transparent Republicans are. As we've said, intentions matter. So if they're coming as honest actors and they're really debating the merit of various provisions, that's fine. But they do want to kill this bill, and it's abundantly clear when they bring certain people to represent their argument.

I'm gonna skip ahead to graphic 20. invited Hans von Spock, I don't know, Spakovsky, Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation and J. Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, two individuals known for exaggerating the threat of in-person voter fraud. So both of them were members of Trump's failed voter fraud commission, which was created to justify the president's false claims that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the last election to help Hillary Clinton out with the popular vote. Now that commission disbanded, guess what?

They didn't find anything. Of course they didn't find anything. We didn't have undocumented immigrants voting in the election. Okay, so let me break that one down. First off, this is the illegitimate part. There is no real debate here, that's why they have to lie. So Trump said millions of illegal people voted to help Hillary Clinton. Then why did they vote just to make a symbolic victory for her on the popular vote, but

decide not to vote to give her the election in the critical states? They're like, no, no, no, it'd be too much to cheat to get the electoral college win so she could be president. Let's just vote in irrelevant states so she can win the popular vote and claim a moral victory. Yeah, that likely happened. Anyway, of course, when they investigated, his own commission filled with these people who who have bad intent, they couldn't come up with any evidence. So they exaggerated some cases and even other Republican appointees that are just the judges

when presented with evidence were like, no, not remotely true and threw it out of court. So what did they fall back on? They disbanded the commission. They were like, yeah, it probably happened, but we're not going to give you our findings. And then the guy who was leading the commission, Chris Kobach, said referenced people who had voted illegally throughout decade after decade after decade. It was a tiny number. And when you did the math on it, the amount of people that committed voter fraud was 0.

0.0000 to 5%. It's a really big problem. Okay, so these guys are comical. It is not a real issue. It's actually in some ways more disproportionate than climate change. At least in climate change, one to three percent of climate scientists disagree, right? 97 to 99 percent agree. In this case, if you're looking at the actual evidence, there are no real people who thinks

that voter fraud is a bigger issue than blocking millions of votes through the laws that the Republicans propose. So this is not debatable, they just don't want you to vote. Exactly. And one other thing I want to share with you, well, two things. First off, the reason why I mentioned that they brought on these two right-wingers, one from the Heritage Foundation, is because they're not interested in maybe legal experts, voting writing, vote, protect, I'm sorry, vote experts in voting, I don't know, I don't know

what they would be called. Voting rights experts, that's what I meant to say, right? Instead of having like experts come in and advise this committee. on the best path forward, they're like, no, no, no, we're just going to get some crazy partisan hacks to help us make our nonsensical points. And that's, that I think speaks volumes. Secondly, one of the quotes that came out of this meeting was by Representative Ken Buck. He's a Republican from Colorado.

And he said, quote, Democrats have a long history of stealing elections. Democrats have a long history of stealing elections. Wait, what just happened in, it was North Carolina, right? Yeah, that's true. What just happened in North Carolina? They tried to steal an election. Was that Democrats? Yeah.

So in the midterm elections, give me a case where Democrats tried to steal the elections. So I love this one. Because when I saw that, I LLOL'd literally laughed out loud. Okay, but to be fair to him, he did have good examples. Oh, this is so good. Okay, so he mentioned a boss tweet from the 1880s. 1980s, I'm not kidding, okay? And that's true, he was a Democrat and that, and that was the 1880s, not the 1980s, the 1880s.

And then he went down to mention Huey Long from the 1930s, Richard Daly from the 1960s, anything in this century, anything Bueller, anything, and he finally said, oh, well, yeah, well, remember how they stole the election from Bernie in 2016, oh, I know, and you were so concerned about that. I mean, these Republicans, they've been looking out for Bernie Sanders for so long. They really have, yeah, they're concerned. Yeah, and that, by the way, was not voter fraud. Those were different issues, how many debates that they said, you know, did they leak questions

to Hillary Clinton? Did they give her an advantage in financing, et cetera, et cetera. That wasn't people going to the polls and Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying, okay, now you vote for Hillary or changes vote from Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton. So I know some people believe that, but there's not. not great evidence to that effect. There's overwhelming evidence that they rigged it in other ways. But the Republicans did not object to that, do not care about that.

And that is not addressed in this bill at all. They got nothing. My favorite, well, that was great. So my second favorite was Doug Collins from Georgia. He said, we discussed the long lines that actually should be applauded, long lines for voting, right? Oh, really? He said, we have long lines because a lot of people wanted to vote. No, no, that's the- He actually had to backpedal later when someone called him out on that.

Okay, so just in case you're unaware, let me just quickly tell you, the reason you have long lines is because they put less voting booths in democratic areas in states that are controlled by Republican governors and legislatures, and they put more voting boosts in Republican areas. So they don't have lines, they just go in, they vote, and more people filter through. If you have long lines, people have to go to work, people have to go to class, and less people vote, that is why they do it. In fact, in Chris Kobach's state of Kansas, in a Dodge City, which is more heavily Democratic, they moved the single voting booth they had outside of the city and a mile away from

a bus station so that those Democrats in that city couldn't vote. So that's why you have long lines, not because, well, everybody's enthusiastic about voting and they got long lines everywhere. Yeah, it's not a nightclub in Hollywood. Like, it's voting, okay? You don't want the long lines. All right, we're gonna take our break and when we come back, while we've been focusing on a million other stories behind the scenes, Mitch McConnell and his cronies have been trying to do away with the estate tax. I love this story because, God, the rich just needed a little extra help.

And wait until you see how many people or how few people that it affects and who they're actually fighting for. It is perfectly symbolic of the Republican Party. 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.