The Young Turks - Trump Makes INSANE Claims At Re-Election Rally
Episode Date: June 19, 2019Trump is spreading more lies. Ana Kasparian, Nando Vila, and Maz Jobrani, 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
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Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasparian.
Jank is out today.
working on some bidness, but we have Nando Vila and Mahz Gibrani joining us for hour one.
Hour two will have a different panel.
Nando will still be here, but Brooke Thomas will be joining us for the second half of the show.
All right, so there is a lot to go, a lot to talk about today, but I just want to remind
all of you that we are doing a TYT special today.
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As you can see, we have awesome panelists, including J.R. Jackson, Brooke Thomas, and Adrienne Lawrence.
All right, with that said, let's get started because there's a lot to fact check.
A lot, a lot to discuss regarding Donald Trump's kickoff rally in Orlando, Florida.
Donald Trump held his reelection campaign kickoff rally in Orlando, Florida.
And there were, I'd like to say that there were moments that were different, something interesting
to talk about.
But really the thing that stood out to me was that there was a lot of recycling of Trump talking
points.
Very similar to what you heard back in 2016.
He is basically doing the same thing this time around.
For instance, he attacked Democrats, the most obvious thing in the world, went after the media
over and over again.
He also whined about how unfair everything is and how he's being mistreated and how he's the victim
of a witch hunt.
He still refers to himself as an underdog, which is incredible because he is the president
of the United States, and he lied a lot.
And so we're gonna do some fact checking in this story and give you some highlights from
his rally speech.
Let's take a look at the first clip.
Instead of bringing us together as one America, Democrats want to splinter us into factions and tribes.
They want us divided.
Not going to happen to the Republicans anymore.
It's not going to happen.
This election is not merely a verdict on the amazing progress we've made.
It's a verdict on the un-American conduct of those who try to undermine our great democracy and undermine you.
So, I thought that was an important video to share because one of the biggest mistakes
that I think Democrats made the last time around was undermining how much of his populist
messaging, even though it's not genuine, how much of that populist messaging really resonates
with his voters.
And when he says something like, they're coming for you, they don't respect you, you know,
when he really taps into that anger, it not only resonates, it gets people fired up and
they become even more active, even more, you know, fervent in their support for him.
And so I just want everyone to be on notice about that because it's wrong to underestimate
how much that message resonates with his voters.
Yeah, I mean, I distinctly remember one of the Trump in the last election campaign in Michigan
said one of the best political lines I've ever heard in my life.
He said, it used to be that we made cars in Detroit and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico.
now, or you made cards in Flint, you couldn't drink the water in Mexico, now we make
cars in Mexico and you can't drink the water in Flint. And the thing is, he was 100% right
about that. He was right. I mean, he didn't do anything to solve the clean water issue. In fact,
he exacerbated the issue by rolling back any type of EPA regulation that was passed under previous
administrations. Of course, but that's what you're talking about, like that populist messaging
that he has. He's actually quite effective at it. And last time around Hillary Clinton was just
the worst possible person we could have picked to counter that message, right?
So I think Democrats will have to be very careful in this time around to find someone who can
actually counter that kind of populist message.
You're absolutely right, and that's what a lot of people said about the whole Bernie Sanders
would have been a better opponent for him because he was also a populist in many ways.
What I find interesting, first of all, is that he's sitting there going, these people
will divide us.
Right.
His rhetoric is all about dividing.
He's got one black dude in the background.
I mean, he's saying I'm bringing people together.
There's always one black guy.
If you look at that clip, there's one black dude in the background, and the whole thing
of like when he says, you know, we're not going to stay.
Look at that.
There's one guy on the left over his right shoulder.
You see that guy with the goatee?
One black, and he's saying bring us together.
I think in a way he fires up his base who are like, yes, white people were going to stick together
and that one black guy is like, yes, we will.
So for someone who's got divisive politics, as an immigrant, I feel like I, in his eyes,
My community is a no-no.
It's a show.
I mean, we are.
I mean, I'm Iranian-American, so we're on the travel band.
So it's like, how are you bringing us together?
You're separating people with the travel ban.
You're separating communities.
I have people within the community that are arguing with each other.
So he's not bringing people to get up there and have the gall to say that.
And then for them to clap is what you guys were saying.
It's the populist message going like, yeah, you're right.
Even though we're doing what you're saying that you don't want to do, we are.
are gonna fix it and they're doing it, you know what I'm saying?
It is incredible.
I mean, look, the Democrats have a hard time unifying within their own party.
I'm pretty sure that they're not thinking about ways to divide the Republican Party.
And if he's talking about broader unification, right?
Yeah, I mean, what is the first thing that Trump did once he was inaugurated?
He puts out a tweet indicating that transgender members of the military will no longer be part
the military, right?
That was beyond divisive, that is a way of separating people, dividing people.
Then he goes into his immigration policy, the travel ban.
I mean, these policies are meant to divide Americans.
Well, his first announcement was the whole Mexicans being rapists.
And I mean, these are all, by the way, I feel like we're arguing things that we've been
talking about for three years.
But the fact is, what you also alluded to at the beginning, it's his greatest hits.
Like, it hasn't changed.
Like, his rallies are like another fast and the furious.
It's like we've seen it before, we know what's going to happen, you know, there's going to be a car chase,
Vin Diesel's going to win, you know, we all know what's going to happen.
Or another episode of the Housewives, right?
Like it's always the same thing.
Someone plans a party, everyone goes to the party, they get into some drama, and then
they talk about each other during the one-on-one interviews.
And then we're all amused, but that's a reality show.
This is the United States of America, this is government, and we should have a better leader.
And in his case, because he keeps eating Big Max is becoming the fat and the furious.
So I just had to get that out.
I'm sorry if I don't offend anybody who's heavy.
I just want to say.
The picnacks are good.
Just a good sandwich.
It's a good sandwich.
It's a good sandwich.
All right, let's take a look at some more of the rally speech.
We stared down the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors and special interests who made
a living bleeding our country dry.
That's what we've done.
We broke down the doors of Washington back rooms where deals were cut to close our companies,
Give away your jobs, shut down our factories, and surrender your sovereignty and your very way of life.
And we've ended it.
So he is still attempting to take credit or pretend as if he drained the swamp, as if he has done anything positive in rolling back government corruption.
I mean, what you see in his cabinet, what you've seen in the people who he has decided to appoint for various positions is the very
definition of swampy behavior.
I mean, we're gonna talk about Patrick Shanahan later, who was the acting defense secretary.
Not no more's though, and I will tell you why later.
But I mean, Homeboy worked at Boeing.
Yeah.
Right?
Now he's thinking about-
His replacement worked at Raytheon.
Exactly, exactly.
So that is the type of, you know, we talk about the revolving door of politics, that's certainly
part of the corruption.
He hasn't done anything about money in politics, he's receiving massive campaign donations.
He received massive donations for his inauguration from all sorts of corporations, including
private prisons, who are looking for favors from Donald Trump.
So he hasn't carried out any of the promises that he made to his voters.
He's done the exact opposite, and he still somehow miraculously takes credit.
It's amazing.
Yeah, I mean, it just goes back to what we were talking about earlier.
That messaging of targeting lobbyists, targeting the elite interests, I mean, he's correct
in doing so.
He's correct in doing that on a messaging standpoint because it is a fact that those people
are sucking us dry.
The question, and for whatever reason, and it's, we can talk about this ad nauseum, but for
whatever reason, Trump sounds credible to a significant chunk of people when he delivers
that message.
The Democrats before, like, weren't countering that message by saying, you know, we don't
like the lobbyists and all that stuff either.
And they didn't have an effective messenger to deliver that message, you know, but that's
That is a broadly popular sentiment.
You know, there is this feeling that there are these interests in Washington who control everything
in the back rooms and rig stuff to help themselves against everyone else.
Yeah, and that anger is certainly warranted.
But, Maas, do you think that it's gonna be different this time around?
Because while Hillary Clinton didn't touch on that at all.
No, absolutely.
Again, this goes back to he's giving this speech and saying what he's doing.
I mean, basically his hotel in Washington, all these foreign governments are coming and staying
at his hotel.
So if you want swamp, I mean, he's the swampiest of the swamps.
You got the whole Jared Kushner thing with the Chinese visas that they were given for exchange
for investments in their, I mean, the family is benefiting, let's start with that swamp.
You got your Scott Pruitts, you got your, you know, you got your Rex Tillerson from the oil.
I mean, it's just, it is so blatantly obvious.
But what happens is, and I say this, like even the beginning, if you had put him on paper,
New York elite billionaire.
These people that he got to vote for him would have said, that's who we're hating.
And he was over there going, we got to get these elites out.
Well, you're one of the elites, dude.
And so going back to like, why do they follow them?
It's the populist message.
It's also, I do feel there's a lot of this, this, I think there's a racism thing there,
I believe.
I think it's very easy to go.
The immigrants are taking your jobs, you know, black people are doing this, doing that.
And finally, they're like, finally, someone's speaking my language and whatever you say
I'm going to listen to.
And I'm going to close my eyes to the fact that you are the
swamp. He is the swamp, but they sit there and keep cheering him on. You know, Maggie Haberman
at the Times went to the rally, which I'd be terrified if ever Maggie Haberman, considering
some of the reporting she's done on Trump. But anyway, she goes and she actually speaks to the rally
goers and says, look, Trump is trying to identify himself as this underdog. Do you think he's
an underdog? And every single person she asked said no. So while he might attempt to push this,
I'm not an elitist message.
I don't know if it's going to work this time around.
I guess we'll see.
But going back to the point regarding how he's just bringing back his greatest hits
from 2016, here's another example of him doing just that.
We went through the greatest witch hunt in political history.
The only collusion was committed by the Democrats, the fake news media, and their operatives,
and the people who funded the phony dossier, crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
I get that some of his voters find him entertaining, but you can only watch the same rerun over and over again so many times, right?
I mean, it's a lie. We've already like dissected that argument a million times, but he keeps saying it.
I feel like at this point, all he needs to do is mention Hillary Clinton, and then his crowd
goes wild.
She's in the woods, why, like, do you have, he has nothing, he has nothing, he can't turn
to what he's accomplished because he hasn't accomplished anything.
Except for the tax cuts.
Except for the tax cuts, which are not popular among voters.
And the reason why they're not popular is because we're not idiots.
I mean, we all get our paychecks, we all see what the tax cuts did for us as working class
and middle class Americans, but the vast majority of wealthy Americans got massive tax cuts,
which is why Amazon got away with paying nothing in federal taxes last year.
Yeah, no, it's crazy.
But I mean, I've been to a couple of Trump rallies in the past in the last election cycle.
And it is a kind of very bizarre experience.
It is kind of seeing like a comedian on this like open night just kind of riffing.
And he is quite good at feeling the crowd and seeing like what's playing and what's not.
He abandoned, like sometimes you can see the prompter and he like abandons a certain line
that's like not really playing and then he just kind of goes off script and whatever.
But like you said, your first reaction is that he's recycling everything, but like you're
a comedian, you know, like how do you, how do you, how does Trump recycle his material?
How do you refresh the material when you're running out of ideas?
Well, you know, I think a big part of it is there's no logic here, right?
In terms of, again, you look at what Mueller said, you look at the, you read some of the report
and there's all these obstruction, possible obstruction, there's a lot of stuff there.
Even the interview he did with Stepanopoulos who says, you know, he goes, there's no collusion.
He goes, well, Mueller didn't say there's no collusion.
He said that he couldn't go after collusion.
And he goes, no, he said there's no collusion.
And then he walks out of the car.
So there's no logic here.
It's all emotions.
And that's kind of what happens in a comedy show.
Or in my case, I'll take comedian, but I would also say almost like a cult leader of sorts.
It's this, it's all emotions.
And they're going, whatever he says, we both.
believe, we think he is, of course he's right, there was, this was a waste of money.
And by the way, he would be, and he is a genius PR person.
Like he would be, he would be so great as the head of a publicity firm because he can just
twist things.
He took the whole Mueller investigation and turned it now into the waste of money, now we're
going to go investigate them, now he flips it and there, and now his people, again, emotionally,
there's no logic there, no one's saying they're going like, oh, I read it, and you
You know what?
I have my doubts.
Like nobody's sitting there raising their hands going like, dude, hold on a second.
There might have been, they're all going like, yeah, you know, whatever you say.
It is a cult.
It's a cult of sorts.
Yeah, look, I think this is the type of speech.
If I were running against him, I would obsessively watch every single one of his speeches.
And then every time he lies or any time he says something that really resonates with
his voters, right, when he pretends like he's draining the swamp, when he pretends like he's
looking out for the working class or middle class, all of that stuff.
And I would find a way to hit him on those issues and call him out as the liar that he really
is.
But I would also focus on that message myself, not from a disingenuous place, but from a place
of sincerity and actually wanting to do something about some of the economic injustices
that he taps into to exploit for his own electoral purposes, right?
But I don't know, look, I think that there are some really strong candidates.
I think Bernie Sanders already on his own does that, you know?
He doesn't really need someone to consult him and tell him to do that.
He is sincere and genuine in wanting to solve some of these issues.
But my worry is that we will repeat the same mistakes as 2016, right?
I watch this speech and I see the reactions from the crowd and I'm like, man, I really hope
everyone's watching on the Democratic side.
I really hope they're taking notes because if they plan on ignoring the anger that these
voters feel?
And look, I know you're not going to persuade Trump voters, that's not the point.
But my point is having a message that resonates with a broader base of voters who do feel
that economic frustration, you know?
Voters in every democracy in the history of the world vote for things, not against things.
In certain very pointed examples you might find, but like in the vast majority of cases,
voters are moved to go to the polls and vote for someone because they believe in that positive
division, you know, you can scare them with the big, bad Republicans all you want, that's
all the Democrats have been doing for the last 20 years.
I remember the 2004 election against Bush very well, I mean, like every single celebrity
in America did the vote for change tour and Bush was like the big bad, the big bad wolf.
I remember that.
But because the Democratic candidate was his wet noodle, John Kerry, he lost.
You know, voters don't vote against people, they vote for people.
All right, so I want to go through some other things.
that deserve to be fact checked before we move on.
So let me just note that according to the fact checking that was done by CNN, his 76
minute speech, and it was 76 minutes long, I watched the whole thing.
What?
Featured more than 15, I gotta do my work, right?
I gotta make sure I know what he said.
Featured more than 15 false statements, many of them ones that he's repeated frequently
in the past.
That seems low.
That does seem low.
I believe that there were more, but they did their best.
So I'll give you a few that I think are notable.
So for instance, he said, we've ended the last administration's cruel and heartless law on American
energy.
What they were doing to our energy should never be forgotten.
The United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the
world.
That's a lie.
Is he now crying for Chevron?
Is that what that was?
Like what are they doing is Chevron?
Poor Chevron and Shell and all these oil companies.
I mean, it's this like whole notion of being a patriotic American who's looking out
for our oil companies and ensuring that we're the top oil exporter.
That's really what this is.
It taps into that, like in my opinion, faux patriotic BS.
And so obviously if you look at the facts though, the US was the world's number one energy
producer before Trump took office since 2012 under Obama.
And I remember that vividly.
I remember we were at current TV, we covered that story, and I remember thinking, this is
very bad, Obama, it's not bringing his best.
Yeah, right?
Yeah, Obama bragged about it like a month ago, you know, and it was like, dude, maybe
you shouldn't brag about that these days.
Yeah, definitely not.
We're all going to burn in climate change, hell.
He also said, Trump said during his speech, and you know, we couldn't get the wall approved
by the Democrats, even though they voted for it four years ago and six years ago.
And so was it four years or six years ago?
And didn't get built, but they voted for it.
All of a sudden, Trump is president, we don't want a wall.
Well, that's not necessarily true.
So did Democrats vote in favor of a wall? No. Did some of them vote in favor of some fencing? Yes. So according to CNN,
wall construction is not moving very rapidly, as Donald Trump said. As of May, zero miles of wall
had been erected in places where there had not been previously a barrier, right? Now, Trump argues
that the new fencing installed to replace older fencing should be counted as his wall,
So he campaigned on a new giant concrete wall.
Yeah, he keeps changing that.
Remember he called them for a minute.
They were, he was calling them metal slabs and then he's like slants, right?
Is that what it was?
Look, we're trying to do remodel at my house and it's taken two years.
I hear you.
So I don't know about this wall, you know?
He keeps talking about the wall.
He's got no money for the wall.
He's trying to find ways for the wall.
It was Mexicans first, then it was, you know, then it was, we could put tariffs on them.
Avocados were going to be more expensive.
I will take cheaper avocados and no wall any day of the week.
I remember some of the few, you agreed.
Agreed.
I remember some of the fearmongering about Mexican immigrants coming into the country.
And I don't remember if it was Trump specifically, but it was certainly a right winger.
And he said something about there's going to be taco trucks on every corner.
Yeah, sounds great.
Yeah, hello, LA.
Yeah, and he also said- We kind of already have that in LA, which is great.
Listen, as someone was in Iran and American, when he was scaring people, he would say,
there's a caravan coming, there's a caravan coming, they're walking towards us at half a mile a day.
And then he would be like, and there's some unknown Middle Easterers in the caravan.
Remember that?
I was watching that, I go, that sounds like every party at my house.
There's always some unknown Middle Easterners.
What's the big deal?
Right?
Right?
Totally.
All right, let me give you a few more.
He also said our air and water are the cleanest they've ever been by far.
And I just want you guys to check out Emma Viglin's incredible reporting.
So she did a report on Mountain Air that is one of Trump's biggest campaign contributors,
the fifth largest campaign contributor to Donald Trump.
They're oil, not oil, sorry, chicken producers, and they have completely contaminated the drinking
water and the well water in Delaware.
Wow.
So no, we do not have the cleanest drinking water.
In fact, he has essentially rolled back many of the regulations that keep our drinking
water clean, that keep our air clean.
And the American Lung Association found that in 2015 to 2017, more cities had high days
of ozone and short term particle pollution compared to 2014 to 2016, 141 million people lived
in counties with unhealthful levels of either ozone and or particle pollution, an increase
of more than 7.2 million Americans since the last annual report.
Eight cities recorded their highest number of days with unhealthy spikes in particle
pollution since the nation began monitoring this pollutant 20 years ago.
So there were all sorts of lies, obviously we can't get to every single one of them because
that would take up the entire show today, tomorrow, and the next day.
But he's a liar and it's incredible how he's gotten this far with completely lying to his
voters, to the American public, and they feel it.
I mean, we're all living in the same society, we see the ramifications, but he's somehow
Teflon Don when it comes to some of these voters.
Well, my question is, I'm sorry, I'm wondering, is he just making this up, you went
to the rally?
Is he just making these numbers up as he goes?
Or does he have people that are giving these numbers and putting it on the teleprompter?
He has like this like, so it's like his brain works in a really funny way in which
he like takes snippets of what people tell him in like the latest meeting he's ever
had.
So that's why like sometimes he has like funny Trump story where he says like something weird
like windmills cause brain cancer.
Yeah.
Like I'm sure someone was telling him something about windmills and then there was like another thing
about brain cancer and his brain just kind of like forgot and put them together.
Yeah.
You know he just kind of takes snippets from like things he hears.
things he hears on Fox and Friends and stuff like that.
And then he just kind of pieces them together in this bizarre pastiche.
Would that make sense?
Because that's why also he always says, people are saying.
People are saying, you know, people are saying.
It's always like some guy he just met with.
Some guy just told me in the bathroom.
All right, we gotta take a break.
But when we come back, we're gonna talk a little bit about the reception to his rally speech.
And Howard Schultz is not my favorite person.
And I want to rip into him.
So we will do so when we come back.
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From the break.
Hey guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna, Nando, and Ma's with you.
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All right, but we do have to move on.
So let's talk a little bit more about Trump's rally, specifically how people have reacted to it.
Following Donald Trump's kickoff rally in Orlando, Florida.
The Women of the View, of course, they're going to have a discussion about it.
And this clip really stood out to me because as we know, Megan McCain and Joy Behar don't
get along so well.
But I think Megan McCain was on to something in the beginning of this clip.
And I really wish Bayhard didn't interrupt her.
Let's take a look.
Don't belittle the crowds.
Don't belittle the enthusiasm.
Democrats still have a lot to come.
Because it's a lot of people still enthusiastic.
And I was trying to explain, because one of my producers this morning was saying, why do people
love him so much. And I was like, sometimes it's not just that they love Trump so much,
it's that they hate the same things Trump hates. That's what's going on as well.
You mean? Who do they hate? Who do they hate? You know what, Joy, I really come here every day,
open-minded, just trying to explain it. Okay, so my reaction to this is super nuanced, because
in the end, Megan McCain made it about her and, oh, woe is me, life is unfair, and I can't
that.
On the other hand though, I think that she's making an important point that some on the left
are so quick to like disregard.
So are there racists who support Trump?
Yes.
But are there other reasons that people support Trump?
Yes, yes.
Now he's not genuine about it, but he does talk about issues that like government corruption.
Obviously he has exploited that for his own personal gain, he doesn't really care about
it, but he brings it up and he talks about it.
And people are angry about that, right?
People want someone who's going to draw attention to that issue, economic issues.
He's not going to do anything that's actually going to help the middle class or working class,
but the mere fact that he brings it up and pretends to care about it resonates with his voters.
To just disregard that and pretend like it's all about racism, I think is a huge mistake.
So one of the most effective things that people on the right do is that they create a very simple grand narrative about why people are
struggling, right?
They point to villains, very specific villains as to, you know, what the problems are, namely
immigrants, Muslims, black people, whatever.
And then they present themselves as the heroes that are going to save you from these problems.
The problems that Democrats always often find themselves is that they can't counter that
because they can't come up with their own set of villains with which to tell a perfect story
about why people are struggling.
Because the villains that are actually responsible for the problems of most people that most
people face are their donor class.
So the Democrats can't really go after them directly.
So they're left kind of just being like, oh, no, no, no, it's not immigrants.
And yeah, of course, but then people are like, so then what's the problem?
And they can't, they can't then challenge the system directly.
And that's one of the big imbalances in our political system.
And that's something that Trump and the right exploit perfectly.
And that's what Megan McCain was kind of getting at.
That's true, but it is pretty incredible because Republicans have the exact same problem
that, you know, establishment Democrats have, which is the donor class.
I mean, the Mercer family helps support Trump.
They're not doing it this time around.
Apparently they've turned their backs on Trump.
But why do you think the one thing that Trump accomplished was tax cuts for the wealthy, right?
So it is kind of amazing how that virus affects both parties, but only one party is suffering
the consequences of it.
I would like to see both parties suffer the consequences of it.
It's because Republicans just prop up other villains, you know, the other, right?
Immigrants.
The Democrats don't have that.
They just don't have that, the villain in the story.
A different scapego to turn.
One of the thing that was interesting, when you first started the story, people maybe
can later on scroll back and see it, the imagery of the people at the rally who were saying
they're not racist, or maybe that's not the only reason that they love Trump, but one
of them actually had like a red, he was like a real redneck, he actually had a redneck.
That guy right there.
Look at that guy's neck is.
So anyway, I was just looking at that, I was like, well, whether he likes or not, he's a redneck.
But I think obviously if you break it down, there are fiscal Republicans, right?
These Mercer's in the sort.
And then I think one of the things that I read one time, and I don't know how much studies
have been done on this, but it was talking about that a lot of times a conservative brain
works out of fear and the liberal brain works out of hope.
So the liberal brain says, let's try this out, let's let the immigrants in, let's let
all this stuff, let's try this stuff out, let's try gay marriage, let's see what happens.
The conservative brain says, if you vote for this lady, she's gonna be pulling babies
out of, on the ninth month, they're gonna take babies out, they're gonna put them in a little,
they're gonna swallow them and gonna kill them.
So the fear of, like, they're gonna take all your guns.
And then they're gonna, you know, all that stuff.
So based on fear, these people go, you know what, you're right, I can't go, I agree
with you, you're speaking in my mind.
The African Americans are taking this, the immigrants are taking that.
The terrorists are coming.
By the way, the biggest threat to Americans are Americans, not Middle Eastern terrorists.
So with all that said, I think that Megan McCain was right in that, but I think that the
motivating factor in a lot of what you were saying is they're very good at pointing at the
villain, bringing out the fear, and- Yeah, and I don't think Joy Behar is wrong, right?
I think that there certainly is that issue with how he is successfully divided Americans,
how he has pointed to the powerless as the catalyst for all of the economic frustration,
which is crazy.
But at the same time, that economic frustration exists.
And I think that it is, you know, the Otis is on Democratic candidates to call Trump out
on what the reality is.
And as you perfectly pointed out, Nando, in the past.
Democrats haven't really been able to do that because when you're accepting corporate pack money
or when you're dealing with these donors, you're not going to want to upset them by calling them
out in your campaign speeches.
But things are different now.
Now you have people in the Democratic Party who are refusing to take corporate pack money.
And that really liberates them and allows them to be more effective in their campaigning.
And I hope that that's what happens this time around.
Now earlier I had mentioned, I apologize, I mentioned Howard Schultz, I meant Howard Kurtz.
We don't like either of the Howard's.
I mix the Howard's up for a second.
But I do want to go to what Howard Kurtz had to say about Trump's rally, because he was very
upset that certain networks did not want to cover or just play Trump's entire rally speech.
Take a look.
Fox News carried the whole thing live.
MSNBC didn't deign to cover a minute of President Trump kicking off his reelection campaign.
And CNN took two, three minutes and then dumped out of it.
And what I have to say about this is it's just a lack of class.
Now, I'm not saying that the cable networks have to cover every Trump rally, and it did turn
into a highly partisan speech in Orlando last night.
But this really is sort of networks playing into what Steve Bannon used to call acting like
the opposition party.
So my response to that was good.
Good.
So it looks like CNN has actually learned a lesson, and I applaud them for that.
because CNN gave Trump all of this free advertising in his last campaign.
And it looks like they learned something from that.
Good.
Yeah, for those of you who know, Howard Kurtz is one of the most unbelievable hacks in the entire media
ecosystem in the United States.
And that's saying something.
He used to be the Washington Bureau Chief of the Daily Beast.
He was the media critic at the Washington Post.
Now, he used to host a show on CNN.
Now he has this show on Fox News.
And his like whole shtick has been to be the media critic that defends positive coverage
of Trump, you know, whatever Fox News does, criticizes the mainstream media for any negative
story about Trump.
It's just, it's, you know, it's become a lucrative stick for him, but it's, it's just
so transparent and obvious, it's pathetic.
You know, we'll be- The grift that keeps on grifting, there's so much of that.
He's really identified that, because he used to be like this kind of mainstream establishment
figure.
And now he's just become like just this right wing hack.
You know, it would be a fun experiment to do.
MSNBC should have run another rally from before just to see what the covers would be the
next day.
People would even notice that it's different.
Right, very similar, yeah.
Just to see and then see what kind of cover is, I'm sure we have the same comments going.
Like he had 15, you know, 150 lies and he said Hillary Clinton, I'm sure it was the same thing.
So why run it again?
Exactly.
Also, this isn't, the way that Kurt's tried to frame this was as if Trump was giving a
State of the Union address.
But he's not, this is a campaign rally, right?
And this is very different from, so let me ask Kurt something.
So when, let's say Tulsi Gabbard does a campaign rally, is Fox News and CNN and MSN,
do all of them need to cover it, right?
If Bernie Sanders is doing a campaign rally, Fox News needs to do it.
to air the entire campaign rally, because if they don't, if they don't, it would be classless.
Yeah, I mean, and listen, you know, Bernie Sanders' campaign rallies get tens of thousands
of people also.
I mean, it's like, you know, these aren't minor events, but they would never cover
them in that way, you know, because this was true, now, I mean, Trump is now the president,
you could make an argument, whatever, but this was true back when he was a candidate.
They were just like run.
I mean, I remember like the whole, you know, just the camera on the podium before he even showed
up, just like a, you know, with a little ticker counting down.
Like, it's just the, this, I remember, it was insane.
I remember, yeah, like, just an empty podium.
Empty podium.
And again, I'm just glad that from what we've seen so far, they've learned a lesson from that, right?
Who knows?
They can go back and do the empty podium thing.
Again, this is just the beginning of this election cycle.
But I love that they're not just giving him free advertising.
Again, he's not acting in his official capacity as a president here.
He is, this is his campaign kickoff.
There is no obligation to cover every single rally speech, every single candidate puts out there.
And by the way, they would probably argue and say, well, he's the president, you should cover it.
But the fact is, we hear way too much from this president, whether it's on Twitter, on his way to the helicopter, on his way to a rally.
And you know what, I'm happy.
I like, please, somebody take his phone, just let him stop tweeting, stop to take the cameras.
Just give us a break just for two days.
Send him overseas again.
I would love that.
I like it when he goes overseas.
I feel good whenever he goes.
The president of CBS after the last election said Trump may be bad for the country,
but he's great for CBS because the media gave him more free coverage than any presidential
campaign in the history of American politics.
Les Moonvez was the person who said that.
He has been ousted from CBS over sexual misconduct.
Sexual misconduct.
Not so good for ratings.
Not so good for ratings.
Anyway, let's move on to some other news.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is no longer the acting defense secretary, and he will not seek a Senate confirmation to be the permanent defense secretary under the Trump administration.
Because of reports that have surfaced indicating that he beat his wife.
And also defended his son after his son beat his wife with a baseball bat.
Wait, his son beat his wife too?
So let me give you the details.
This is such a gruesome and disgusting story.
And it seems to be a problem that Donald Trump's administration has been riddled with from the very beginning.
And we'll get to that in just a second.
But according to the Hill, Shanahan and his then wife, Kimberly Jordensen, got into a late night argument in August of 2010 that escalated into a physical fight.
Jordensen reportedly told police Shanahan punched her in the stomach while he told police.
that she was the aggressor and punched him, quote, 10 or 20 times, she was actually arrested
on suspicion of domestic violence, but prosecutors later dropped those charges, citing a lack
of evidence.
There's more, though.
The Washington Post also detailed a 2011 incident in which Shanahan's and Jordanson's son
hit her with a baseball bat, leaving her unconscious in a pool of blood.
After the incident, Shanahan flew to Florida, where Jordansson and their son.
then lived, rushing to the defense of his son.
In fact, he put out a memo saying use of a baseball bat in self-defense will likely be viewed
as an imbalance of force.
However, Will's mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.
First of all, I don't trust anything this guy says.
But even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and you believe that his wife harassed
the son for three hours, you don't get to beat someone with a baseball bat.
But he has shown some remorse about that statement.
He says, quite frankly, it's difficult to relive that moment.
And the passage was difficult for me to read, I was wrong to write those three sentences.
Now with that said, and given all of this stuff that has come up about his domestic abuse,
what does Donald Trump have to say about him?
Take a look.
Pat Shanahan, who is a wonderful person, is, as you know, is, as you know, is, you know,
now going to take some time off for family matters. And I want to thank him for service.
He is a terrific person. And it's a difficult time for Pat. But he's going to take a little
time off for family service and for working things out. I didn't ask him to withdraw,
but he walked in this morning. He said it's going to be a rough time for him because of obviously
what happened. But I did not ask him to withdraw. He presented me with a letter this morning.
So he referred to Shanahan, a man who defended his son after beating his wife with a baseball bat and leaving her at a pool of blood, referred to him as a wonderful person and a terrific person in the video you just watched.
Yeah, you know, it's just very comforting that the most powerful military in the history of the world, the capacity to blow up the world many times over, was being run by this unhinged, you know, clearly unstable person.
I'm not talking about Trump, I'm talking about Shane.
And he was pushing for war.
I mean, just earlier this week, we were reading quotes from him in regard to invading Iran.
It's out of control.
But this guy, this guy beats his wife and gets a job in this administration.
His son beat his wife.
Well, no, he punched his wife in the stomach and then the son with the bat.
So he beats his wife and gets a job in the administration.
Meanwhile, the Central Park 5 don't commit a crime and they serve 10, 14 years, whatever it is.
So Trump seems to be quick to judge the Central Park 5, but this guy's a good guy who needs to go figure out his issues.
I'm really glad you brought that up because just yesterday, April Ryan asked Trump whether he would apologize for what he had said about the Central Park 5.
We're talking about men who were exonerated.
They had served time in prison for a crime they did not commit and they were exonerated using DNA evidence.
They were innocent.
And Trump refuses to apologize to them.
Would never refer to them as wonderful people or terrific people.
But when it comes to this guy, Shanahan, he has no problem, you know, calling him all these
positive names, being incredibly complimentary toward him.
What also stood out to me was the fact that Shanahan has actually been confirmed before
by our Senate.
And so what kind of vetting takes place?
Like, what are these confirmation hearings for?
First of all, you have various members of Trump's administration who have lied under
Oath, no consequences, who cares, right?
And then you have this case where this guy has carried out acts of violence against his own family
members, his wife.
How do you not know about that?
What kind of vetting takes place?
Is there any vetting?
Do people in Congress do anything?
These people in Congress, I mean, they see that he was a 30-year employee of Boeing,
one of the nation's top defense contractors, and that's good enough for them.
Right.
Well, you know, he was saying that he wants to implement extreme vetting for immigrants
It's coming to America, extreme vetting.
Maybe he should start doing some extreme vetting for the people they're going to be in his administration
so we don't end up with all these people abusing women that are in his administration.
Wasn't there the other guy he did?
What was his name?
I forget his name.
Every six months to a year.
I was- I mean, this is president grabbing by the, uh-uh, you know, so maybe.
And so I just want to like wrap this up by mentioning when people like me get upset at women
who vote for Trump, it's not because we have ideological differences.
Right?
If you are a conservative woman who has conservative values, do you, boo, right?
I'm not gonna hate on you for that.
But I will be upset when you vote for someone who treats women as second class citizens.
Because if you're cool with that, cool, I mean, all right.
But then that's gonna extend to my life.
You know, I don't want someone leading this country, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican,
treating anyone as a second class citizen.
And the way that Trump has talked about women, the way that he's
he has treated men who have abused women makes it abundantly clear that he sees women as second-class
citizens. We got to take a break. We'll have more for you when we return. At TYT, we frequently
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Welcome back to TYT.
If you're watching this on TYT.com slash live, that means you're watching it on a website,
right?
That's a website.
Yeah, that is a website.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do as an online new show without having a website.
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Go to squarespace.
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I was actually just talking about it with my sister today.
Cool.
All right, so I wanted to just quickly update you guys on the story that we just did on Shanahan.
So Robert Porter was one of Trump's administration officials who actually ended up having
to leave the administration because two of his wives or ex-wives had come out and alleged
that he had hit them, had committed domestic violence against them.
Jennifer Willoughby was one of those wives, and then Colby Holderness was the second one.
In fact, one of them had released a photo of what her face looked like after he had hit
her.
So this is something that's obviously an issue within Trump's administration and indicative of
the type of people he likes to surround himself with, but I think it's also important to know
that look, these confirmation hearings mean nothing if you don't do the proper vetting, if you don't do the homework and ensure that the people you're questioning are telling the truth because they are going to lie under oath. It's happened over and over again. And to see them get away with it with no consequences is just ridiculous. And by the way, Trump, after all of this came out, was super complimentary toward Porter.
Yeah, oh yeah. Stood up for him. Of course. All right, let's talk about Iran. We have more updates.
As the Trump administration continues pushing the United States toward the direction of war
with Iran, CNBC decided maybe we should talk to an expert, someone who would have really
great insight on these foreign policy decisions, you know, someone who maybe made a ton
of terrible, terrible decisions when she was in a position of power under the Bush administration.
So here's CNBC interviewing Condoleezza Rice.
I do think that we are seeing that Iran is the big troublemaker in the Middle East.
I think we've known that for a long time, but the Iranians can be reckless.
They can engage in activities that you would think of why would you do that?
Because it's going to provoke a response.
Obviously, they are being squeezed pretty hard under the sanctions that the administration has put on.
And I will say that the decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal, clearly the Iranians are trying to fight back,
But it says something about that deal that the Iranians are so quickly able to start saying
that they can break out, they can start enriching at a very high level.
Notice the KPMG, like the giant sign of the golf course, anyway, that's beside
the point though.
Why are we asking Condoleezza Rice anything?
I mean, she was a failure in a failure administration that led to this disastrous preemptive
war in Iraq, a war that we're still involved in, what are we doing?
Why do we keep rewarding people who have failed?
Well, why is John Bolton in the thing?
John Bolton was also part of Iraq and supportive of the war.
That's right.
And now he's his advisor.
Exactly.
I remember the good old days when Trump did not want to hire Bolton over his mustache,
whatever, that was a dumb reason to not want to hire someone, but I'll take it if it means
Bolton's not in the administration.
So now we have the same goons, Pompeo and Bolton pushing for war in Iran, this is a disaster.
And why is the media asking Condoleezza Rice what she thinks about foreign policy?
She was a failure, she continues to be.
I mean, she completely lied in that clip.
First of all, we see that Iran, they're the real troublemakers.
No, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and then slapping on massive sanctions that, you know,
squeeze the country economically, I would argue is troublemaking behavior.
Yeah, I mean, this is what, there's two things that drive me insane about this whole Iran story.
The first is what you just mentioned, this, and the way the media frames it is so frustrating
because they talk about Iran violating the tenants of the Iran deal, and you're like, hmm,
wait, the United States pulled out of the Iran deal last year.
That's right.
So, like, how could they violate the provisions of a deal that the other side has already pulled out of?
No, it's, it's maddening, it's insane.
It's absurd.
And here's an important point that I think even well-intentioned people leave out when they're
having these conversations in the media.
Not only did Trump pull out of that Iran nuclear deal, Iran continued to follow through
with the Iran nuclear deal because, you know, there are other countries involved that signed
onto this deal.
They're like, hey, yo, we're gonna keep up with our end of the deal, you keep up with
end of the deal, let's just, the US isn't involved, fine, but let's just keep going.
And then the United States, Trump specifically starts to threaten other countries that are involved
with this deal and says, look, if you're not going to abide by these sanctions and you're
going to continue doing business with Iran, we're going to have issues.
And so that further economically devastated Iran, and that's why they're now pushed in this
direction.
Like they've been cornered or pushed into the corner, and what do you want them to do?
I mean, the number one person who did not abide by the Iran nuclear deal was Donald Trump.
And he and his administration continue to push Iran in the direction of war.
And it's so unnecessary.
You know, your point you made about Kondaliza Rice, first of all, whenever people would say
Hillary and Benghazi and all the hearings and all that stuff, I said then we should have
a hearing with Dick Cheney and G.W. and Kondaliza, all the people that took us into
this war that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
So that's number one.
But we want to look forward.
You want to look forward, right, Maas?
And then number two, as an Iranian American, I'll be honest with you.
First of all, let me just start by saying that the Iranian government is an oppressive
government.
They oppressor people.
There's a lot of things that are not good about the Iranian government.
So is Saudi Arabia.
And the United States.
But being someone who's been in America since, you know, I left because of the revolution.
I came here because of this government.
I saw 40 years of us budding heads.
And when the nuclear deal happened, I thought maybe diplomacy will be able to be able to
to find a way to bring the Iranians into the world economy so that then we have a little
bit more push and pull in terms of trying to affect their human rights behavior or all
this other stuff.
But as soon as we pulled out, like you said, it felt like, okay, here we go, the saber
rattling for the war.
And now, like, it feels like we're getting closer and closer.
And the only saving grace I see here is that Donald keeps saying he doesn't want to go to war.
So that's the only saving grace that I see, but I don't know.
There is one other saving grace, and we're gonna get to that in a second.
But first, I wanna show you the second half of what Condoleezza Rice had to say, because it is
a bold-faced lie, and I'm going to tell you why.
Take a look.
I watched Secretary Pompeo.
I think that he is somebody of significant substance and a cool head.
I know the people like John Bolton, I think they will manage this.
We need the Europeans with us.
This is a time for the United States and Europe to say to the Iranians.
It's fine to come back to the table, but not when you're threatening to cause havoc in
the Middle East or along the sea lanes.
Do you think the 2015 agreement was the wrong choice for the United States?
I didn't support the agreement.
I certainly understand wanting to get there with Iran.
I actually started the negotiations with Iran when I was Secretary of State, so I think
negotiation is the right way to go.
But this particular agreement had certain weaknesses in verification.
Oh, there's a lot to unpack here.
So let me just start off by responding to when she said that Iran is threatening to cause
havoc in the Middle East and then failed to provide a single example of how Iran has threatened
to cause havoc in the Middle East.
They have not threatened.
They have not provided any evidence of that.
And more importantly, the evidence that our government has produced regarding the Japanese
oil tanker being attacked is inconsistent with what the Japanese government is saying and
is, in my opinion, incredibly flimsy and not nearly enough to convince me that Iran is trying
to provoke us or trying to attack us in any way.
Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but look, Iran does have a hand in certain places, whether
Syria or in, with Hezbollah or whether, they do, they do, they do, exactly, just like us.
They are not an innocent actor here either.
But what you were just saying, you're right in that it feels like we are pushing, you know,
it's like these bees that, you know, that possibly, if, again, we had come up with a deal that get them to get them to be dependent on us economically,
then maybe we'd have a little bit of push and pull.
But now that we pulled out, exactly we just said, now we are the ones sending tankers there and we're the ones bringing John Bolton in.
We're the ones that are bringing a lot of aggression in.
So yes, we are threatening to wreak a lot of havoc.
Exactly, and like every time we do these Iran stories now, I think of it as, give me permission
to touch you.
Like not in any, okay, it's like I'm America, you're Iran, right?
Yeah, stop hitting yourself.
Come on, come on, come on, come on, you're gonna do something about it?
You're gonna do something about it?
And then like the second you actually fight back, can you believe that?
Can you believe that?
Can you believe what he just did?
Not even fight back, like just like the slightest, like, you know, the slightest, like
slap away, you know?
Like, not even like a clock to the face or something.
But I mean, there's just, there's a, there's a really funny.
Onion headline about this, that was like, you know, a fake John Bolton quote that was like
an attack on a Japanese oil tanker is an attack on all Americans, you know, like this notion
that like we're going to go to war over some Japanese oil tankers like just bizarre, but the fact
that they're just like so outraged about this is completely maddening.
And then the other thing that drives me insane and it feels like I'm taking crazy
pills is I'm watching, you know, Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi who have been three years
blue in the face telling me how this is a uniquely dangerous administration and authoritarian
and they can't be trusted with anything and that they're, you know, agents of the Russian
government and stuff.
And then as soon as one of these like little foreign policy things creeps up, they're like,
you know, we have to, we have this Iran threat is very serious.
And, you know, we think that these tankers.
And it's like, be an opposition party.
Yeah, they're not.
They're not.
They're not.
When it really matters, they're not.
They're not.
And it's frustrating because when it comes to war, when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy,
when it comes to the issues that really do upset the vast majority of Americans, it seems
like there is unity among Democrats and Republicans.
But I want to also address one other lie that Condoleezza Rice said in that last clip that
you watched, because she is regurgitating this talking point from the right regarding,
oh, well, there were no ways of monitoring what Iran was doing.
It was weak in oversight.
No, it wasn't.
So let me give you the exact details.
The landmark 2015 nuclear deal Iran made with major world powers created with the United Nations
nuclear watchdog calls, quote, the world's most robust verification regime.
In signing the deal, Iran agreed to comprehensive monitoring of its nuclear facilities and related
sites by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
That includes daily access by inspectors to and continuous monitoring and as by camera feed
of its two underground enrichment sites.
The deal also requires Iran to implement the UN Nuclear Watchdog's additional protocol, which
provides inspectors with wide ranging access to information on Iran's nuclear activities
and the ability to inspect any site it deems necessary to verify that those activities are
peaceful.
So look, you want to have a conversation about Iran's involvement in proxy wars, cool.
That is not what the Iran nuclear deal was about.
The Iran nuclear deal was about ensuring that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons, okay?
That's what it was about.
So all of fear mongering about Iran, it's a nuclear threat, it's a nuclear, we had something
in place to prevent that from happening, and it had strong oversight.
You hear these war mongers who get paid by the defense contractors telling you the exact opposite,
just straight up lying to the American people and trying to drag us into a war that we have
no business getting involved in.
You know, I was at an event where John Kerry was speaking after the deal had been made.
And he said this was when there was those sailors that were captured by the Iranian Navy
in the Gulf.
And he said that in the past, when he didn't have the deal, he would have to call the Swiss ambassador
to then call the Iranian ambassador, and then they would have to work everything out.
And he said within that 24 hours, it could have escalated.
But he goes, now that I have this direct line, I call the Iranian ambassador Zarif, and we get it fixed.
And if you guys remember, those sailors were able to get out within like 24 hours.
As a matter of fact, Donald Trump did some tweet about like how weak we are or this deal,
whatever.
But coming up with a situation like this where there's some people saying that this was actually
the Iranians, some people say it's not, you know, again, if we had, if we had, if we had,
We stayed in the nuclear deal, then Secretary Pompeo could have called the Iranian guy and
said, what's going on, and then he could have come back with whatever it is, and we could
resolve this issue.
But now we're escalating towards a confrontation.
And here's the thing, Pompeo doesn't want to resolve the issue.
They want war.
And the idea that he has a cool head, as Condoleezza Rice alluded to, is ridiculous, I mean,
that is probably the biggest lie, she told, in that interview.
But going back to what you had said, what is our-
our saving grace when it comes to this whole situation, believe it or not, members of the right
wing.
So Tucker Carlson earlier this week had aired a segment where he called out the flimsy evidence
that the Trump administration is using in order to sway voters to support this war.
And now we're finding through The Daily Beast that a source familiar with conversations
told the Daily Beast that in recent weeks the Fox News host Tucker Carlson has privately
advised Trump against taking military action against Iran, and a senior administration official
said that during the president's recent conversations with the Fox primetime host, Carlson has
bashed the more hawkish members of his administration.
His voters don't want it.
Trump's voters don't want it.
The American people in general don't want it.
So hopefully he listens to his instincts and actually looks out for his base and does the right
thing here.
Well, I'm afraid what the problem is that we've set this up in such a way that
It could be, again, something similar to this, that's maybe even more irrational from
the Iranian side.
I think the Iranians, from what I was listening to some analysis, some of the things they're
trying to do is trying to say, look, we can affect the oil prices.
So come to the table, talk to us, lift some of these sanctions.
So in their push, they may push a little too far, or maybe the proxy wars continue and
escalate.
I mean, I'm fingers crossed that we don't end up in a war, but I wouldn't be surprised if
that started happening.
The crazy thing is that, you know, the Iran deal in 2015 was one of the most remarkable foreign
policy achievements in the last 30, 40 years.
It was truly like a historic thing.
It seemed like, you know, there would actually be a retrenchment between two nations that were
at each other's throats since 1979, right?
And now, I mean, if I'm an Iranian leader, the only rational thing is to get a nuclear
weapon at this point, because the United States is not going to mess with a country that has a nuclear
weapon.
It's just not going to happen.
No country in the history of the world with a nuclear weapon has ever been attacked.
Technically the UK with the Falklands in Argentina, but that doesn't really count.
But other than that, like- That is a theory, it's a political theory by Kenneth Waltz, which
has some rationality to it.
And it's like the behavior of the United States is solely responsible for that because, you
know, Iran has shown incredible good faith in the last few years.
I mean, like I said, the United States unilaterally pulled out of the deal against the
recommendations of the United Nations, of the European Union, of basically everyone else
in the world.
And now they're chastising Iran for violating the terms of the deal that they pulled out of.
Exactly.
Why would Iran think that the United States is an honest broker in this is insane?
I mean, their only rational thing is to get a nuclear weapon and then they won't be messed
with.
All right, Mahz Jabrani, thank you for joining us for hour one.
Thanks for having.
Always great to have you.
Where can people find you?
I'm gonna be touring, I'll be in Dallas this weekend.
Sandy, go next weekend, masjobrani.com, as well as I've got a new podcast called Back to School
with Maz Jobrani. You can find it anywhere you find podcasts.
It's good.
Do you go back to school?
I go, like a Ronnie Dangerfield situation?
Hey, Ronnie.
No, I bring in experts from different walks of life and they teach me as I try to make it funny.
It's really good.
I checked it out.
Yeah, yeah.
I just started listening to it.
I'm obsessed with podcasts.
Oh, great.
I should probably take a break from political stuff and, like, you know, news-related
stuff.
The Bon Appetit podcast, very good, you should listen to it.
Okay, I'll check that out.
But I do love how you inject the comedy.
Yeah, and also it's not all political.
Like we had a guy who's a shoe entrepreneur, we've got a guy that worked for JPL for NASA.
So we cover all kinds of stuff and just try to make learning fun again.
Cool.
All right, check them out.
And when we come back from the break, Brooke Thomas will join us for the second hour of the show.
Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.
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I'm your host, Jenk Huger, and I'll see you soon.