The Young Turks - Trump In Trouble With ANOTHER World Leader

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

You would think he would know not to do this by now. 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. All right, back on the Young Turks. All right, we got a couple of great guests for you guys as usual. And then we got a huge post game for the members, including Mitch McConnell beginning to throw Trump under the bus. That's going to be super interesting.

Okay. And one other secret reason for the Ukraine call. God, has a lot of good stuff in the postgame. I'm not saying t-y-t.com slash join to become member and get it. I'm just saying. All right. So joining me now is Ken Kilberstein. He is senior investigative reporter for T-YT investigates. Ken, welcome to the young Turks. Hey, man, great to be with you. Good to be with you. Ken, I'm going to talk a little bit about your reporting, but I also want to talk to you about the news of the day. So I'll throw you a bunch of questions that I didn't warn you about. So that'll be fun. Okay. So, first of all, let me see if you know anything lately about. Pelosi wanted to narrow the impeachment proceedings, and she wanted to do it just about Ukraine. And then there was a back and forth fight between her and both progressives and other committee leaders within Democratic leadership who didn't want their power taken away.

And it seems like she backed away from that for a second. But since then, all we've done is talk about Ukraine. Do you have any idea what the latest on that is, on whether they're going to go broad or narrow? Well, I can tell you just generally that the staffers I talk to, and I talk to quite a range within Congress, are saying that there's enormous tension. And this predates the debate about the nature of the impeachment probe, enormous tension between sort of Pelosi and not just a progressive wing, But increasingly sort of maybe more centrist liberal groups that are thinking, boy, this is, you know, really getting out of control. Maybe we should, you know, go in harder on Trump.

So without being able to comment specifically on the Ukraine situation, that's the backdrop in which this is taking place. I really think that's sort of the battle that you're seeing is a lot of formerly maybe people caught in between the two camps or maybe more towards a center's position, kind of defecting to the progressive side, if only to protect their own reputation among really angry constituents. Well, speaking of which, I mean, there's something weird going on. Why would you not talk about his business dealings? Why would you not talk about a couple of the crimes that we know already? And if you eliminate that from the conversation, it allows Donald Trump to say, see, even the Democrats don't want to pursue that. I must be innocent of that.

But it's gotten weird. I mean, Richard Neal will not take Trump's tax returns. He will not take it on a boat. He won't take it on a goat. The state of New York said, here, here's Donald Trump's state tax returns. But only the head of the Ways and Means Committee in the House can take it. That's Richard Neal, one of the Democratic leaders. He's like, no, I don't want him.

And then I don't want to look into his potential business ties with Russia, even though both his kids say, yeah, all of our money came from Russia. I mean, Ken, a guy who had six major bankruptcies cannot possibly get a loan from a major financial institution without a cosign. Do you know if the Democrats are making any effort to ever look into his business ties and find out, for example, who was his co-signer at Deutsche Bank? I of course can only speculate as to, you know, why Pelosi doesn't want to go ahead with this. But I would imagine that, you know, she's always been and represented a sort of approach to politics, which is, you know, court the big donors, a lot of the same big donors that the Republicans had in the past. And, you know, we're going to have, they always hear this

phrase used, especially we talked to staffers more on the, you know, center, center part of the party where they say, we're a big 10 party. And they don't, that sounds great. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, let's all sorts of religions, creeds and, you know, ethnicities. And but they, they sort of use that as a euphemism for let all different types of income groups and their preferences into the party. So I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't want to pull the trigger on, you know, investing in the financial side of things, if only because that could implicate all sorts of friends of hers. And, you know, we've seen this all perhaps best epitomized by the photo of, you know, Donald Trump at, it was some wedding and it was Trump and Clinton were at together. But, I mean, the nexus between wealthy donors on either side of the party is a very large one.

And I wonder if that's sort of a can of worms that they, I mean, you see all the time, they want to keep the fight above the belt in the sense that once you start going after, you know, businesses, then there's so much white-collar corruption on the corporate. side of things that maybe they're afraid of where that could go. And I think that would be rational from her point of view, if that's indeed what she's thinking. And remember, the reason why Democrats are so forklempt about Donald Trump going after Hunter Biden is because a lot of their family members go all around the world cashing in on their last names. In fact, Pelosi's son went to New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Lago recently. So they're still partying with the Trumps. Now, that doesn't mean that Pelosi's son is corrupt? I don't know what his situation is. I don't know what his business dealings are. And I'm not trying to imply that. All I'm saying is I've seen

Orrin Hatch's kid become a lobbyist, cash in. I saw Norm Coleman's wife become not a lobbyist in her case, but a company that wanted favors from Norm Coleman when he was senator at Minnesota paid her a job where she literally had no experience and never showed up and got a ton of money. So is this kind of a well-known practice? We all get rich here, and hey, everybody be cool. And if we go after Trump and turn that rock over, there's going to be a lot of things we don't like to see under that rock. And by the way, Trump keeps saying, sorry, one more question related to that. Trump keeps threatening them saying, you don't want me to tell people what I know.

Does anybody have any idea what that means? Because it's possible that in the Washington rumor mill, they could already be, you know, spreading some of that stuff in Republican circles. Yeah, no, I think that's a totally legitimate. I mean, that's the first thing that I thought when I saw how this was playing out. And Trump's saying something like that, that's just perfect. Who knows if he's even referring to anything in particular? He could just, you know, he clearly knows how to trigger the fear center in people's minds.

You know, perhaps people have a certain political persuasion more than others. But he's an expert of that. And when he says something like that, you know, he may well know that there are all sorts of people in Capitol Hill that have things they don't want coming out. Maybe everyone's thinking, oh gosh, is he talking about me when in fact, perhaps he knows nothing. But I think that's a rational question to ask as to why they're not moving ahead with this. Because as you've said, Jake, from day one, it's the business side of things that you're really going to find stuff in. And so we either have to conclude that either, you know, Pelosi and the Democrats that agree with her are morons or they have some way they're benefiting by not by not opening the door to this side of the investigation.

Now, I want to go into your reporting a little bit because today we do the story about. how the State Department has a lot of issues, both foreign workers, former workers, I should say, and current workers, especially the former workers, are now getting letters in the mail saying things that emails you sent to Hillary Clinton have now been retroactively classified, that means you're in trouble because that was a security violation, even though when you did it, it was not a security violation, but we're looking to punish you anyway. So on the other hand, you have good news of the Department of Homeland Security about morale.

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and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertainment, all at the same time. So it turns out, according to an internal DHS-wide memo that people received and was sent to me from a source that I have in there, they were celebrating the head of DHS that their morale was up. And so I thought, oh, gosh, what is it up to? Maybe they appreciate all the money Trump is sending them. It was up 1% and they decided to send a message. to everyone celebrating how great that was.

And if you look at it, they don't actually list which subcomponents within DHS comprise, or they listed a couple that comprise the increase. And it's like the Coast Guard and can't remember the other groups. But notably, it was not ICE. It was not CBP because what you find with those groups is that there is a, there's been reportedly a crisis of morale within the groups really engaged in the border stuff. And that's certainly on an anecdote level, what I've heard from folks inside that I talk to. in those sub agencies.

So I thought that was sort of telling that even with all the money that Trump is throwing at them and all the new authorities, you're not seeing an increase in, I mean, you're seeing a 1% increase, which is, of course, is, you know, quite small in that that is not actually localized to the groups that he's lavishing all this stuff on. It reminds me of one of my favorite tweets right before he dropped out of the presidential race, John Hickenlooper, send a congratulatory tweet to himself saying, hey, everybody, it's time to get excited. We're peaking.

We just reached 2% in the polls. It reminds me of Rubio. Do you remember where the commentators were like, oh, he's going to sweep the country here? You know, he gave him in third place, second, you know, fourth place and the last one. He's about to clean up here. Yeah, and of course, the infamous Joe Mentum, when Joe Lieberman came in fifth and said, it was basically a tie for third, so I have Joe Menton. It's still funny.

Anyway, now, one of the calls that apparently Trump hid in a secret server was from the Saudis. And so there's a lot of discussion about his ties to the Saudis. You've uncovered a Saudi-linked lobby group that's pitching a film about the child detention centers. What on God's Green Earth is that? Well, there's this lobby group that was one of the few that didn't sever ties with the Saudis following the report of the really grisly murder of Virginia resident in Washington Post reporter, Jamal Khashoggi, who himself was a Saudi national living in the United States. They lowered him into the Turkish, I believe it was the consulate, and ended up dismembering, you know, killing and dismembering him. And after that, it became

sort of untenable for even some of the, you know, most slimy comm shops and lobbying groups to represent the Saudi. So many of them dropped them. Elizabeth Warren actually wrote a letter to a bunch of these different groups urging them to drop the Saudis. And this company, it's called Corvus, was one of the few that did not. And it was sort of a film script that was leaked to me from someone, not to be vague to try to protect sources, but it was from someone who was concerned with the directions things were heading. What it found was that the only private for-profit child detention, child migrant detention

facility in the United States, there's only one. our government and, you know, ice run and owned, was doing a propaganda film. They had been contracted to do the same Saudi, the same group that represented the Saudis have been contracted to do a propaganda film. And if you read it and I encourage people to, you know, go on t.wit.com slash investigates to read, embed the script in it, the description is, I don't know whether to be horrified or just burst out laughing because it talks about zooming in on, it was a former military base, this child detention facility, talks about zooming in.

on the on the on the on the on the arches and emphasizing how beautiful be built but um how pretty the um nature and and plants and animals around it are and so it just goes on like this and a lot i think a lot of people find that sort of distasteful and kind of scary yeah no it made me want to go i mean i thought only i could be locked this up in such a beautiful place separated from my family um anyway great reporting as always t yt.com slash investigates ken thanks for join us Appreciate it. Hey, great to see you, man. Take care.

You too. All right, Ken and I will be together in Ohio. We will be doing some sort of meetup and or rally in Ohio, so you can start signing up for that at t.yt.com slash rally. Now, we're gonna take a quick break when we come back, a great candidate for you guys. All right, back on a young Turks. Join me now is Peter Khalil, he's a congressional candidate in Washington's third district. I watch too much football because I keep wanting to call him Peter Khalil Mack.

All right, Peter, welcome to the Young Turks. How are you? Hey, Jank. Thank you for having me on here. I really appreciate you're being a loud, progressive voice for us. No problem, brother. So I want to find out more about you and why we're running for Congress. But first, I want to get to know your district a little bit.

Washington's third district, represented by a Democrat or Republican? Representative by a Republican, Jamie Hurrah Butler, it's going to be coming on 10 years now, and we really need to flip this thing. And what's going on over there? The state of Washington is generally considered to be progressive, but obviously it has pockets of conservative voters. How red is this district? So we are just about a 50-50 district with a little bit of a tip towards the red. We are in the southwest corner of our district is Vancouver, Washington, the main city.

We've got the health care, the ports, and information technology and stuff like that. And then outside of Vancouver and Clark County, we have primarily rural, you know, seven other counties represented in our district. And, you know, those do tend to swing red, but, you know, everybody there, you know, wants the same things. They want health care. They want to be able to live a good life, drink clean water and breathe clean air. And they want a government that is for them and not for the corporations. So, Peter, if the district is that close, it's going to be on a list for the national Democrats. So you, based on what I've read so far, appear to be pretty progressive, so they're not going to like that.

I'm curious what the dynamic is for the Democratic Party in that district. Well, you'd actually be surprised. So when you say they aren't going to like that, we're getting a really good reception within the population, you know? I don't go around saying, hey, I'm Peter Khalil in these rural areas, and I'm a progressive Democrat. You know, I come and I say, you know, how long does it take you to get to a hospital? How much in medical bills do you have?

You know, what's happened to you? You know, a lot of these counties have not recovered from the recession. So we talk about the issues. And you are correct that within the Democratic Party, there is a split between the progressus and I guess what you would call the moderates. And, you know, I'm not interested in being in that fray. I'm interested in being above that fray. You know, ultimately, it's the people who are going to decide it's not going to be the party here.

Okay. So about the voters, I'm not remotely surprised. But you have in your plank, for example, Medicare for All, Green New Deal, anti-corruption. So those are not things that Pelosi gets excited by. And they're like, oh, send the cavalry for Peter Khalil. That's right. Okay. They're not going to be sending the cavalry.

But the great thing is there is no substitute for human engagement. There is no substitute for connecting directly with people. And that is what we're going to do. We're going to win this thing, vote by vote. We're going to win this thing door by door. And we're going to win this thing event by event. And that's the only way we can do it. And that said, we are going to get a lot of good progressive endorsements.

We are going to get a decent amount of money. But the way that we are going to do this is good. old-fashioned politics, good old-fashioned retail politics. And we have to do this, I believe, because 2020, I think, is our last chance on a lot of things. But you're right. Cavalry isn't coming for us. Yeah. So you worked on Wall Street, Peter. What did you learn from that? And what did you decide to do instead? So yeah, I worked for a big white shoe law firm. And I understand you're a lawyer as well. And so you kind of know how it works. From 2007 to 2010, I worked for a big Wall Street law firm. And my wife did too, and I represented banks, and my wife was actually in a made-off case.

And what I saw there was stomach turning, honestly, to be honest, you know, you had these companies betting for and against the same risky investments. You had companies, banks openly violating anti-money laundering regulations. But, you know, the worst thing was, you know, two really bad things, you know, one that they didn't really care. They didn't care about these main streets being decimated. And the second thing was, and, you know, this is why I'm running on a very, very anti-corruption platform, is that they would contribute millions and millions of dollars, either directly or indirectly, to political campaigns to make sure that our representatives voted the way they wanted them to vote, not the way the people wanted them to vote.

And that's why I left that. After only three years, I left Wall Street, so did my wife. And we moved out to the land of my wife's upbringing up here in southwest Washington. And, you know, turnover a new leaf became a mediator and arbitrator. And my wife's a nonprofit lawyer, a victim's rights lawyer out in Portland. And, you know, we decided that we were going to work to make people's lives better. You know, I did half of my work for free for the last few years. Of course, you know, my law school did pay off my student loans in return. And my wife has been a nonprofit lawyer, you know, ever since we worked out here or came out here. And, you know, the purpose of life, I believe, is service. I think the legacy that I want to leave behind is the legacy of improving as many people's lives as possible. So Peter, you do have a strong anti-corruption stance, but tell folks what it is. So what would you do mainly to get rid of that corruption?

Because I remember the famous moment when Anderson Cooper, at least is famous to me, when Anderson Cooper asked in the Brooklyn debate back in 2016 to Bernie Sanders, do you think the money that Hillary Clinton took from donors affected our votes. And he was too damn polite to say yes. When you know and I know and you saw it with your own eyes, that's the whole point of the money, whether it's going to Republicans or Democrats. So what would you do about it? You know what? It's going to be a hard climb. Here's the thing. We do need to overturn Citizens United in some way. And short of getting another court, we need a constitutional amendment. Of course, as you know, the states can, you know, the government can regulate the time, place, and manner of, you know, of political donations of speech, you know, I don't know how money has been, we've decided that money is speech. So you know, the government can regulate the time, place, and manner so we can severely restrict contributions to, to political campaigns. But here's the other thing. Well, you know, here's my, if I had my druthers, we would have publicly funded elections. We would have elections that didn't last more than a few months.

we would have ranked choice voting. That is my ultimate goal. But short of that, short of that constitutional amendment, short of a constitutional convention, we really do need to limit the time, place, and manner. We need to figure out ways to put obstacles to these big donations. And we need to give the FEC a bit more teeth in enforcing the rules against concealment, things like that.

So, you know, we got to do what we can within the constraints of the Constitution. But ultimately, we do have to change the Constitution because money should not ever have been determined to be speech. Yeah, that's 100% right. Public financing can be done through things like democracy dollars where you empower citizens to contribute to politicians. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies

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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 t-y-t, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. So that you even, the score between the money they have and the money that the Koch brothers or even Soros has, right?

And then you do an amendment to end private financing altogether because otherwise, Paul politicians work for private interest. So there's a great plank, exactly right. So a lot of controversy about whether Medicare for all is popular. Now, if you look at the polling, there isn't actually much controversy. Even when they skew all of the polls against Medicare for all, it still does pretty well. If you tell people what it actually is, I've seen a poll as high as 78%. But they will say to you, Peter, what are you doing?

Running in a purple district that has a Republican incumbent on Medicare for all, the voters will hate that. They love big private insurance. So what are you seeing from the voters? The voters do not love big private insurance, whether you're rural and Republican, whether you're a progressive Democrat, people are drowning in medical debt. I see people every day who are having to make the choice between bankruptcy and getting better between housing and health care and between food and health care. That decision should never have to be made by a single person in the most wealthy country

on earth. And when you frame it that way and when you frame it, you know, as something that affects people's everyday life, there is no more Republican or Democrat. You know, I've had people who support Trump agree with me that we need single payer health care, that we need to acknowledge that it's, whether or not it's popular. It's a moral imperative in the richest country on earth for health care to be a right, plain and simple. Absolutely. Now, one of the thing that is on your plank that isn't on everybody's, is rural internet. So, and I do see that sometimes from candidates in Kansas and Montana, and you're, of course, in some of the rural areas of Washington.

What's going on there? For us, big city slickers, what's the situation with the internet that makes it such a driving issue for all of your candidates in those areas? So you go out into these rural areas, and we've got a lot of rural counties, Pacific, Scamania, Lewis County, Clicket County, and what you see. see time and time again is that people are unable to access the global marketplace, that businesses are unable to access their customers, that there is no incentive for businesses to invest in these rural areas because broadband internet does not exist in those areas. It may exist in some pockets of

those areas, but overwhelmingly when I ask people outside of Clark County, what is your biggest need? They just need to be connected to the world. They're still operating on very, very slow speeds. It's hard to sell things online. It's hard to be a corporation and communicate with your customer base, even process payments if you don't have internet access. And the same goes also for the electrical grid out. The electrical grid out there needs to be modernized. We are in our rural areas decades behind. And that's why it's an important issue to these people out in our rural areas because it is really hindering the economy there. They have not recovered from the recession. And this is part of the reason why. The other reason that I'm pushing for rural

broadband internet is because we're at the crossroads, we're in the crosshairs of a lot of investment on behalf of fossil fuel companies, right? So they want to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure. And what I'm trying to say is, no, we don't need this fossil fuel infrastructure. We need the infrastructure of the future. And rural broadband is part of that infrastructure. So what I'm saying is if we build rural broadband, we satisfy the need for infrastructure and union jobs out in these areas that haven't recovered from the recession. And we give people access to the global marketplace. So it serves a dual purpose. And that's why it's so important out here.

Yeah, I'm really glad I asked because I had always assumed that it was mainly for Netflix. No, I'm kidding. Seriously, though, I had assumed that it was mainly for access to information, which is critically important. But I didn't realize that because I don't live in one of those areas, that it's also really important if you want to run a business. How the hell are you going to sell anything online if you can't go online? Exactly. Yeah, that's the modern economy, no question. So it's imperative to the economies in those areas as well.

And I'm glad you're fighting for it. Before we let you go super quick, is the doll behind you next to the Peter Khalil sign of Ruth Bader Ginsburg? That is my wife's Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figure. And don't call it a doll, all right? It's an action figure. All right. Big ups to the Khalil family. Okay.

Khalil for Congress.com. This is actually the last day of the quarter. It's actually very relevant to donate, especially on the answer. day like today, fighting against anti-corruption. Khalil for Congress.com slash donate slash volunteer. All the links are always down below if you're watching later on YouTube or Facebook. And by the way, our URLs for that for any of our interviewers is YouTube.com slash TYT investigates.

That's a good place where you could find all these interviews very conveniently. Peter, thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you, Jack. I really appreciate you're having me on. No problem. Okay, when we come back, we've got another half an hour for you guys who are members. And so we've got a lot of important, interesting news.

Is Mitch McConnell beginning to throw Donald Trump under a bus? Is there a fourth reason why Donald Trump made that call to the Ukraine? The answer is yes, and I hadn't thought of it, and it made me go, oh. Muslim congressman takes on Donald Trump in a brilliant way. And more. all of that for the members t yt dot com slash join and become a member right now we'll see you there 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 dot co slash t yt i'm your

host jank yugar and i'll see you soon