The Young Turks - Trump Spelling, Trump Lawyer, Toys ‘R’ Us, and McMaster Resigns

Episode Date: March 24, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from March 22, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. 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. Thank you for watching or listening to this free podcast of the Young Turks. We want to make sure that you get some portion of the show every day. But if you want the full show, which is actually five segments, come become a member and support independent media as well. TYT network.com slash join.

Meanwhile, enjoy the free podcast. All right, guys, we'll do tweets later in the program, and we've got a Facebook debacle to tell you about a Kushner debacle as well. Lots to do, but I got to give you more stories as quickly as I can. We're obviously back on the Young Turks. Let's go over here. Okay. So Donald Trump, trying to outdo himself again. Last week, we had a poll on the dumbest thing he said in 2015.

hour span and there were three significant competitors. Check that out at t-y-tnetwork.com slash dumbass. We will have a link down below for you guys in the description box on YouTube comment section on Facebook. Okay, so now, to be fair to Donald Trump, this time he took two days to do three incredibly dumb things. So let me share it with you guys and then we'll do a second poll and it'll be fun. So he recently tweeted about the special counsel, except he spelled not just counsel wrong, he spelled weather wrong, he put the twice. Here, let me show you the tweets. He writes, special counsel is told to find crimes. That's not how you spell counsel in that case. Whether crimes exist or not, that's not how you spell weather. I was opposed to the, the selection of Mueller to be special counsel spelled wrong again.

I'm still opposed to it. I think President Trump was right when he said there never should have been a special counsel appointed because there was no probable cause for believing that there was any crime collusion. or otherwise, or obstruction of justice. So stated by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Okay, now he's, Dershowitz didn't write it like that. Dershowitz is now a total right-wing zealot, especially on the issue of foreign policy. So he's like, oh, yeah, Harvard law professors on my side. Oh, okay, you have a neo-conservative, you know, right-winger on your side. Big surprise.

Anyway, of course, Dershowitz at least would be smart enough not to, misspelled counsel, and Trump did it three times. That's okay. You know, sometimes he gets carried away in his tweets. It's not really okay. He's the president. If Obama had made those errors, they were like, oh, we knew it. It was affirmative action that got him into Columbia and Harvard law.

We knew it, right? And they'd ask for his transcripts, which is what Donald Trump did. I'd love to see Donald Trump's transcripts. Really, you went to Wharton, and you passed those classes? you got good enough grades that formed us transfer into Wharton. Now your daddy got you in, you're an idiot. You don't know how, you have no idea how to spell. Anyway, the other idiots that surround him go, oh, Mr. President, oh, you got a misspelling there.

You misspelled weather in that case, okay? So they put out a new version of it, and let's look at the new version. Yeah, now they weather, no, no, no, that's not it. Let's go to the graphic 71. So the new version, weather is now correctly spelled in this case, and they took out the extra the. But all the idiots at the White House kept counsel misspelled in the new version too. Oh, they are so dumb. Look, if you don't know how to spell counsel in the two different cases, fine, man.

But you're not the president of the United States and you're not putting out a public tweet about the special counsel. The guy that you can't stand, the one that's hounding you, the one that might take you out of office. Just take a second. Look it up online or something. Don't embarrass yourself like this day in and day out. So a couple of fun tweets about it. Person writes in here, shows all the mistakes, gives him an F, and then says, stay in school kids. That was Ryan Parker. And then Keith Boykin with a funny tweet as well. He says, Dear Donald, there's special counsel, not the special counsel. council is a group of people like a student council. A council is a lawyer like the people you hire to pay off porn stars. Boy could also point it out that Fox News also misspelled it. That's probably where Trump got it from. Okay, but we're not done. So that's entrant number one into the race

of dumbest thing Donald Trump has said in the last 24 hours. Well, today he's going to introduce Lockheed Martin's CEO and brag about the F-35 and her name is Marilyn Houston. Okay, Marilyn Houston. So I want you to remember that as he introduces her, get a load of what he calls her, and then what he says about the F-35 because we have two contestants from this one small video. Let's watch. We have some of our great business leaders

and leaders period right behind me. I may ask Marilyn Lockheed, the leading woman's business executive in this country, according to many. And we buy billions and billions of dollars worth of that beautiful F-35. It's stealth. You cannot see it. Is that correct? That's correct. Better be correct, right? Marilyn, please say a few words. Okay, let's break it down. Number one, our name is not Marilyn Lachid. The name of the company is Lockheed Martin.

Look, you can say that he misspoke, but somebody write it down for him. And again, you're the president, you're on camera. I'm going to vote against that one because of all the different dumb things he does, it seems benign by comparison. But we put it in the poll for you guys. My favorite one out of that clip was, it's invisible, right? It's invisible. And you're a Wonder Woman, right?

It's not. And then she's embarrassed. And she's like, yes, Mr. President, it's invisible. This is from Lockheed Martin's own website. Stealth is not invisibility. Rather, stealth gives the F-35 the ability to elude or greatly complicated an enemy's ability to find and destroy an aircraft using a combination of design tactics and technology. It allows you to evade radar. It is not an invisible plane, you dumbass.

Okay, the president doesn't know we don't have invisible planes. Oh my God. All right. So what is the dumbest thing Donald Trump has done in the last two days? You guys get to vote. TYT Network.com slash dumbass two. Number one, misspelled special counsel. Number two, call CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marilyn Lockheed. Now that I say it out loud, it's pretty funny. And number three, say that a stealth fighter is invisible. Okay. Looking forward to the results. The links are down below. Make sure you click on them and vote early and often. Curious as to how that's going to turn out. We're moving forward. I'm going to an important story about the president's lawyer. Okay. Hold. Okay.

So one of the president's lawyers has stepped down. His name is John Dowd. There are a number of possible reasons why he did this and important ramifications. So let's break it down. First, we go to Ross story. He had considered resigning for months because he, quote, ultimately concluded that Mr. Trump was increasing ignoring his advice, and New York Times originally reporting that.

And Dowd has repeatedly tried to warn the president against doing a face-to-face interview with special counsel Robert Mueller, whereas Trump himself has said that he believes he should do an interview with the special counsel. Now, Andrew Napolitano, Fox News legal analysts, went out on TV today again, was like, that Mr. President, don't do that. Don't do that. Basically, all these lawyers are saying, no, you knucklehead, you don't get it. Robert Mueller is infinitely smarter than you.

And we know you, you're a pathological liar. You're going to lie on the record about 17 times per minute. And then he'll have you for sure. But of course, when his lawyer tells him that, Trump's like, oh, no, I got this. I got this. I'm way smarter than Mueller. I'm going to outsmart him.

You know, because you know why, guys? You know why? Because I'm a very stable genius. Okay, all right, if you say so. So if dad was counseling him not to talk to Mueller, and now he's out, fantastic. Yeah. Hey, Mr. President, man, you're like a smart person.

Don't let your lawyers sell you otherwise. Okay, so another issue for doubt was this tweet that President Trump had sent out back in the day. Now, this was back in December of 2017. He said, I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty of those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide.

Now, I'll tell you why that created a significant problem for Donald Trump. We're going to go to law and crime here. The argument was that the tweet indicated that Trump already knew Flynn had lied to the FBI at the time and still asked Comey to back off. Oops, they shouldn't have done that. So that was a mistake. It, in essence, admitted obstruction of justice in that tweet by the president. So what did his lawyer, John Dow, do in that case? He fell on his sword.

And he said, oh, it was not the president who tweeted that. It was me. Yeah, I grabbed his account and I did it myself. That makes no sense at all. No one believed that. But that created a second problem for them. Now, as they explained the law and crime, if Dowd didn't really write the tweet and Mueller asked him about it,

he'd have to either lie to the special counsel to protect his, client or tell the truth and incriminate him. So that could be a big, big problem. Now, in this case, Dowd wouldn't even be able to claim attorney client privilege because he had publicly said he wrote the tweet. Once you reveal information to a third party of the whole world, you can't claim privilege over it. So then he's in an unwinnable situation. If Dowd was still working for Trump, law and crime explains and was called before Mueller to answer of those questions, there's a decent chance he wouldn't be by the time

he was finished. So, in other words, if he comes in and says, yeah, Donald Trump wrote the tweet, I was lying, he saves himself but throws Donald Trump under the bus and then you got an obstruction of justice and you can't do that to your own client

so then you couldn't be his lawyer. Or he has to lie to the special counsel on a thing that he does not have an attorney client privilege on. And then his career in a world of trouble. Now, one way to avoid that conundrum is stop being Donald Trump's lawyer. And

that's exactly what John Dowd did. So they might have had disagreements. I don't doubt that at all, but this might also be a reason why Dowd stepped down. Now, one last thing for you guys. I want to talk about the guy that they brought in partly to replace him. His name is Joseph E.

D. Genoa. And he is a clown extraordinaire. He had explained there was a, quote, brazen plot by officials in the FBI and DOJ to illegally exonerate the Hillary Clinton, and if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime. Okay, that's an insane conspiracy theory.

I know the president likes to push it and Fox News likes to push it, but a legitimate attorney that would not like to be disbarred can't just go say that to prosecutors or an open court. that is preposterous. So more good news for the country, if you ask me. A legitimate lawyer has left the building. He was giving good advice to Donald Trump in order to try to protect him from a prosecution for the crimes he likely committed.

Now he is gone and instead has been replaced by a total clown who's going to go, oh yeah, the FBI had all these conspiracies and they were going to try to make sure that Trump doesn't become president. Well, at some point you're going to be in a court of law and you're going to have to present evidence about that. Where's your evidence? I don't know. I've been working with other Trump lawyers for a long time. I think there's a conspiracy of the deep state or something. Yeah. Jay Sekalo, another absolute amateur, clown lawyer extraordinaire, is the personal lawyer for Donald Trump. These guys are way above their pay grade. They don't know what the hell they're doing. Secholo brought in to Genoa, and they're like, okay, you believe crazy things? I believe crazy things. Hot five.

I think that the president is in way bigger trouble than he realized. And the problem is, as Scramucci said, the fish rots from the head down. The reason he has clown lawyers surrounding him is because he's a clown. So when a smart person walks in the room, he goes, no, no, no, you're not smart. I'm like a smart person. Hey, tell him to Geneva about the deep state and how a very stable genius I am, right? And they go, yeah, Mr. President, you're great, man. You're going to kill Mueller. Go testify in front of him, Mr. President. Tell him about the

deep state. A clowns. A clowns. Okay. If you're running a three-ring circus, you got, you need a lot of clowns. All right, I think I've been clear on that. We're going to move forward. Now we go to the Austin bombing. Okay. It turns out the person who had done the bombings in Austin has left a 25-minute confession. He passed away when officers caught up with him. He blew himself up. That was a sixth bomb that exploded. Two had been killed in the earlier bombings, five injured. So good law enforcement to track him down and find out who he is. Then they found his confession. And here's interim Austin police chief Brian Manley explaining what is and what is not in the tape. He said he does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention

anything about hate. But instead, it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life. That led him to this point. Now, do I doubt that the bomber was quote-unquote challenged? No, I do not doubt that. Now, we showed you yesterday that he had written blogs with very conservative opinions. But I think it is relevant. that he did not mention anything related to hate, or if he didn't mention politics at all, or any agenda for the bombings, that is super relevant as to whether it actually was terrorism or not,

because if he has a political or religious or social policy agenda, then it's unquestionably terrorism. So I think the first part of that quote is important and relevant. The second part about how he's a very challenged young man, how often do you see a Muslim terrorist being called oh it's just a challenged young man I mean he decided that he was going to mow down

nearly 50 people he was a challenged young man he oh that guy was going to kill his co-workers that other guy was going to do a bomb in New York City they were just challenged young man well golly gee what can you do look I don't think the police chief means any harm in it at all I just think that he looks at the guy and goes there, but by the grace of God goes someone I know. He looks

like me and so, and he had troubles and so, and his troubles led to this. When it's a Muslim, a foreigner, it doesn't look like me, doesn't have a similar name. I'm not going to look into whether he was challenged, challenged. No, he's a monster

and we're done with it. In fact, let me show you two different things here that I think illustrates that really well. Our producer Jared Jackson found these. At first, we're going to go to Representative Michael McCall on Fox News. And listen to how he describes the Austin Barber. This is, I guess, in a sense, homegrown terror. What do you think we've learned so far? Well, you now usually talk about these cases in New York. I didn't imagine this happening in my

hometown of Austin. I think it's clear from his confession that this is not terror related, although it did terrorize the city of Austin for the last month. I think the nightmare is over. It's time to heal in Austin. I think it was a disturbed young man. a very probably mentally ill type person. So let me get this right. Even though he terrorized Austin and did a series of bombings, it is not terrorism. Because now we found out he's a white right winger. He's just a disturbed young man.

That's all. Well, now let's look at Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, describing a New York City attack, which was done by a Muslim. Let's watch. The horrifying terrorist attack in New York City just blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center and to further investigate. We need to talk about a relatively new show called

Un-F-The Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unravel traveling 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. This animal who did the attacking, I am today starting the process of terminating

the Diversary Lottery Program, Diversary and diversity lottery. Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. And we want to get rid of chain migration. This man that came in or whatever you want to call him. In that Austin case, six bombs went off. The whole city is terrorized. Everybody's looking at every package like it's going to explode. It's not terrorism. He's just a disturbed young man. What can you do about it? In the New York City case, he's an animal. He's not a man. Whatever he is, he's not a man. And more importantly, in the Austin case, well, now that we found out he's a white right winger, nothing we can do, nothing we can do. Let's just move on. Move on. Oh, it's a Muslim in New York. We've got to end all immigration. What they're calling chain migration is legal migration. Those are legal documents.

the heart of legal, I'm sorry, legal immigrants, the heart of legal immigration. So he's going to end all legal immigration, almost all legal immigration because of one bomber who was Muslim in New York. What are we going to do about Austin? There's so many right-wingers in Texas. Austin's mainly liberal, but also there's plenty of conservatives in there. Are we going to, you know what? Austin's mainly liberal, right?

So maybe we should just keep out the right-wingers from Austin until we can figure. out what the hell is going on? We've got to end the chain migration of conservatives walking into Austin and terrorizing the city. The reality is that we should be consistent. We should care about all forms of terrorism, no matter where it comes from, and we should have the decency to be consistent about what we call it as well. So I'm actually going to go to a Ryan Riley article from Huff Post on this.

It makes a really interesting point about one of the reasons why both the media and authorities are hesitant to call domestic terrorism terrorism, unless, of course, there's a Muslim about it. Anyway, the United States has no federal law criminalizing acts of domestic terrorism. That's something the FBI agents association, an organization that represents more than 14,000 current and former FBI special agents would like to see changed. So they explain, while the U.S. Code defines domestic terrorism, there's no broad criminal statute that outlaws such acts, which means that it is hard to call a domestic terrorism and charge someone with it because there is no such crime. So at least if you're using guns, for example. So let me give

you more on that. The lack of a criminal domestic terrorism statute makes the federal government extremely cautious about using the term terrorism when there's no link to a group the United States has officially designated it as an international terrorist organization. So that is why if it's even a Muslim American like in Orlando and right before he goes in he's like I'm kind of doing her for ISIS even though that's a gay club he had attended

over and over again and he was a troubled young man but no one called him that he was a disturbed young man but no one called him that they just said he was an animal terrorist and says he said the magic word ISIS well they're outside the country terrorist okay

a series of bombings in the middle of Texas not terrorism and partly for this reason. In practical terms, Riley explains, that means the government doesn't call white non-Muslim terrorists what they are. Then he goes on to explain the federal government would have been able to charge conduct with a terrorism-related crime had he lived. His package bombs would count as weapons of mass destruction.

But Thomas O'Connor, the FBI agent, pushing for a statute on this case, says the weapon itself shouldn't be determining factor on when someone is committing an act of domestic terror. Call it what it is. If you have an incident that takes place and the person uses a firearm, a car, a knife, if that crime of force or violence is done to forward a social or political agenda, then that person fits the elements of domestic terrorism. I believe that our right-wing friends have a very strong point of view on terrorism. They say that if you just call it the right words, it'll solve the problem.

It hasn't yet. But let's try it. So this was domestic terrorism. Let's call it what it is. Okay. Now, let's go to Eric Prince. All right. Amazing news story out of The Intercept, written by Jeremy Schaill and Matthew Cole.

Now, it starts with an interesting fact about the current FBI director, but it's mainly a story about Eric Prince. and his company Frontier and the dealings that they have with foreign countries and what they have sold of our military technology to those countries. So they explain, as a private attorney in 2016, the FBI director Chris Ray supervised a team of lawyers that informed the Justice Department that Blackwater founder Eric Prince had likely violated U.S. law while trying to sell secretly modified paramilitary attack air aircraft to Azerbaijan's military. Now, I want to go through all the countries that he has betrayed us to for money.

Let's note for the record, I don't mind and I don't care which country had happened to me. I don't want it to be any country. But the right wingers tell me that Muslims are particularly dangerous. And I know that they're fact challenged. So let me inform you that Azerbaijan is a Muslim country. So he's taking our secrets and selling it for profit, potentially illegally as you're about to find out to a Muslim country. You guys okay with that? I mean, I don't know.

The right wings is the one that's telling us, oh, Muslims are dangerous. And Prince is like, yeah, but am I making money off of it? What do I care about America? You know, he doesn't even live in the country. He took up residence in Abu Dhabi, another Muslim area, if you're not aware. Now, his group Frontier, it's also referred to as FSG, retained the law firm King and Spalding to conduct a review of the company's legal exposure to violations of U.S. law and weapon sales and the export of defense services to foreign governments and militaries. The attorneys concluded that Prince could potentially be charged with brokering defense articles without a license, according to a copy of the review obtained by the intercept. Again, great reporting here.

Now, at the time, Greg Smith was the CEO of this company, FSG. And he said the potential violations stemmed principally from the conduct of Mr. Prince, a U.S. person. Okay? Now, what are those violations? Well, violations of international traffic in arms regulations can trigger civil penalties of up to half a million dollars or criminal penalties of up to 20 years in prison, depending on the specific nature of the violence. violations. You want to chant with me, guys? Lock him up.

Lock him up. 20 years. 20 years. Okay. An internal investigation by his own company said the evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Prince was offering a foreign defense article, i.e. an attack aircraft for sale to Azerbaijan M.O.D. Oops.

Now, his own company looked into this. Obviously, there was internal disagreements about whether they should be doing illegal things like this. The CEO didn't want to, in this case, Greg Smith. Eric Prince led those efforts. So the lawyers were hired a king in Spalding. They seemed to confirm what was happening, and then they turned it over to the U.S. government at some point. So let me give you more details. The 2015 internal report by FSG's lawyers from King of Spalding concluded that, quote, based on the information available, it appears likely that Mr. Prince engaged in brokering activities without the necessary approval from the U.S.

In connection with the attempted sale of the secretly modified paramilitary aircraft, the Azerbaijan's Ministry of Defense. So, did the Justice Department do anything about it? Now, for progressives, brace for impact, because this is really frustrating. What action, if any of the Justice Department took after Ray's team, shared their initial findings, has not been made public. Quote, we were perplexed by the lack of immediate action by state and justice departments, the former senior FSG official told the intercept, adding that he and others at the company got the impression that, quote, nobody wanted to dig into this until after the 2016 election.

So the Justice Department under Obama was like, oh, Eric Prince's own company has turned him in saying he is, quote, likely doing significantly illegal acts selling our technology to foreign countries for money. That's a 20-year prison sentence if he's caught. Don't worry, Hillary Clinton will in and she'll deal with it. Let's not do anything until after the election. Oops, Donald Trump wins. Eric Prince and his family have given a tremendous amount of political donations to Donald Trump. Now all of a sudden, Eric Prince is free to go. Not only that, he's lobbying to start a mercenary army, a private army within the Pentagon

that would report to Eric Prince. Trump pushed for it. Now, they didn't get that in any of the legislation, but they did get a private intelligence sector set up within the U.S. government that has been privatized. Our intelligence community, a part of it has been privatized. And that was one of the things that Eric Prince was pushing for. By the way, Eric Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, the current education secretary. So it looks like if you want to build a swamp, you know, you just go give money to Donald Trump.

And then when he wins office, you don't have to worry about rule of law. There's no more rule of law. You don't have to suffer any consequences. All your legal problems go away. All of a sudden your sister becomes a cabinet secretary. You go have meetings with the Russians in Seashells Island and other controversy surrounding Eric Prince. But he's not done selling this out just to Azerbaijan. They also point out on Sunday, Prince and Oliver North, speaking of traders, of Iran-Contra fame,

hosted a fundraiser at Princess Home in Virginia for his longtime friend, Republican representative, Dana Roerbocker. Dana Roerbocker known as Putin's favorite congressman. If you think Trump's over the top in his praise of Vladimir Putin, you should get a load of Roerbocker. So these guys who claim to be patriots, whoever's got money, Putin, Roerbocker, the Gulf countries, African countries, Azerbaijan, who cares, they'll take your money and sell out America and our secrets.

Okay, but we have still not gotten actually to the number one problem. Soon after Smith reported Prince's potential violations to the State Department, Smith was forced out of the company and Prince and his Chinese business partners consolidated power. Smith tried to do

the right thing and follow the law. They're like, do you know what we do? We're mercenaries. No, you're fired. No, we do not accept good guys. I don't know if you heard that as we were hiring. No, only bad guys here at Frontier. So now that's part of it.

But the most important part was the end there. Wait, did they say business partners from China? Well, are they private? Are they state-owned? Let's find out. At the time, Prince was being investigated by U.S. law enforcement and his communications were being monitored. What began as an investigation into Prince's attempts to sell defense services in Libya,

by the way, another Muslim country, and other countries in Africa widened to include allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. So

Eric Prince is working with the Chinese to help governments in the Middle East and Africa and places like Azerbaijan maintain them maintain their power, crush the opposition, get access to U.S. military goods that they are not

supposed to have access to. But is it owned by the Chinese government? Let's find out. FSG's single largest shareholder is Citic Group, the Chinese government's largest state-owned investment firm. Citic, which recently invested another $60 million in FSG, is the company's largest single shareholder. Eric Prince literally works for the Chinese government. And this is the guy

that is being trusted to run either a private army or private intelligence agency within the U.S. government. I can't imagine a larger violation of national security. So his secret dealings with the Russians on Seychelles Island

and the fundraisers for their favorite congressman It seemed like peanuts compared to this. Even giving Azerbaijan military goods that they're not supposed to have that are unauthorized. I mean, that's a 20-year sentence. That is not penis. That is a significant issue. But to do this at the behest of the Chinese government, to give away our defense goods to Azerbaijan because China told you to. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives.

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But listen, guys, this is important. and 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.com slash T-YT. Check it out today. To say that they are not patriots is the greatest understatement you could have. They don't care about America at all. All they care about is money.

And they will sell us out and have apparently already sold us out to the highest bidder. Okay. All right, guys, one last story. I love this story. in this hour at least. Okay. So you might have heard that Toys R Us has gone bankrupt. They're going to close all their stores in the U.S.

And you might have heard different reasons for that. But you probably didn't hear the most important one. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. So first of all, CNN explains the company told employees on Wednesday that it would close or sell its U.S. stores after 70 years in business. So, is it market reasons? You know, you've got Amazon, it's causing troubles, obviously, for the retail industry. You've got other competitors. Well, let's find out.

Toys R Us, debt problems. Oh, debt problems. That's not often talked about. Date back to well before Amazon was a major threat. Its debt was downgraded to junk bond status in January of 2005. At a time when Amazon sales were just 4%, of their current level. So Toys R Us started having problems way before Amazon grew into the Goliath that it is now.

So that is not the heart of the problem. Well, things were about to get worse for Toys R Us. A year later, the company was taken private by KKR, Bain Capital, and real estate firm Vornado. Vornado also has a deal with the Cushners, by the way. The $6.6 billion purchase left it with $5.3 billion in debt secured by its assets, and it never really recovered, okay? So, well, was it the debt or was it other issues? And by the way, Vornado's deal with the Kushner family is in regards to buildings in New York City,

not related to Toys R Us, to be clear. Now, the toy store faced several other big challenges at about the same time, CNN explains. There was the rise of big box retailers like Walmart, which now dwarfs Toys R Us in total toy sales. So that's fair. But what was the biggest problem? Well, again here, Chris Isadora, writing for CNN, explains the company's biggest problem, it was saddled with billions of dollars in debt, that debt stopped it for making the necessary investment in stores,

and that meant an unpleasant shopping experience that doom the chain. This is actually something that happens all the time. When companies are bought by private equity guys like Bain Capital, A lot of times the private equity guys take out a significant chunk of money for themselves out of the company right in the beginning. They saddled the company with tremendous debt so the company can never improve itself. Let's give you the scope of it. Even Toys R CEO, David Brandon, conceded it in an SEC filing last fall that the company had fallen behind competitors, quote, on various fronts, including with regard to general upkeep and the condition of our stores, exactly as was predicted. And this is what happens when these companies are loaded with debt.

But much of the chain's resources were devoted to paying off that massive debt load rather than staying competitive. When Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy in September of 2017, it disclosed it had about $5 billion in debt and was spending about $400 million a year just to serve as that debt. Now, there's a lot of different reasons why a company might have debt. That is not illegitimate. And not all of KKR and Baines investments go south like this, and they don't want it to go south. They want to be able to take money out in the front and on the back end. And so, on the other hand, when they are over leveraged like this and the company has to spend $400 million a year just on servicing their debt, well, it is very hard to recover it. It's very hard to put in the necessary investment into the actual business itself.

to grow the business, to upkeep the business, and to have it be profitable. So basically, I mean, you can call it a vampire squid. If it's over leveraged, they come in and they start sucking the money out. And then when it collapses, they go, oh, Amazon or Walmart. Now, those were factors, but they were not the main factor. In fact, that burden, the tax burden, credit out critical strategic priorities like making it stores a nice place to shop and paying employees. And Bloomberg reports, partly offsetting the loss that Bain and KKR and Vornado is having right

now, is more than $470 million in fees and interest payments that Toys R Us awarded the firms over time. So don't cry for those private equity companies, because they had already taken out nearly half a billion dollars from Toys R Us before it collapsed. So understand when your local stores go down. There is sometimes an obvious reason that you can see with your own eyes. Competitors did better. Sometimes there are reasons you cannot see.

And that has to do with how private equity is structured and how much debt they put on these companies. And at the end of the day, in most of the deals, the private equity guys get money in the front, oftentimes in the back. They make plenty of money. And that is their job. But some of these companies collapsed in the meanwhile. and we never hear of them again. And that's how this game is played. All right, we'll be right back.

You're right in the middle of this podcast. We've got another great segment coming up for you. If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments, go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member, you support the show, you support independent media, and you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now.

All right, back on a young church, Jake and Anna with you guys. March for our lives. March is happening this weekend on March 24th. Make sure you go check it out. Emma Viglin will be covering it for TY.T. in Washington, D.C., and Hassan Piker is going to be at the L.A. March. So please go attend the marches. And then if you see Emma or Haas, that's great. And we'll try to provide that coverage for you guys on Facebook.com slash the Young Turks. So check that out as well. And I promise I'm going to get to tweets later in the show, but we have breaking news, and we can't stop the news. It's nonstop, and this one is gigantic. So, Anna, you got it. All right. National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster has officially resigned

from his role, and according to reports, John Bolton will take his place. Now, previously, there was some speculation indicating that H.R. McMaster would get fired by Donald Trump. They had been budding heads on some issues, including Russian collusion. And it turns out that McMaster has decided to step down, and John Bolton again will be the new national security advisor. Donald Trump did tweet about this, as he usually does about every other issue. He writes, I am pleased to announce that effective 4-918, April 9th, 2018, Ambassador John Bolton will be my new national security advisor. I'm very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster, who has done an outstanding job and will always remain my friend. There will be an official contract or contact handover on April 9th.

All right. So let's begin to talk about this disaster. So first of all, he says he'll always be my friend because this is a more amicable split, as opposed to Rex Tillerson, who left obviously very angry and was fired as Secretary of State. Mike Pompeo moving from CIA to state if they are confirmed, and then now Bolton moving into National Security Advisor. Now, the reality is there's two different reasons why McMaster's leaving. One is Trump won't listen to anyone, and so when McMaster gives advice on Afghanistan, for example, Trump says, no, I don't care, and I'm not going to do that, Trump pushes for outlandish ideas like increase our nuclear arsenal tenfold, which is totally undoable.

it's preposterous. That's the meeting that they all left and Tillerson called him an effing moron. Right. Okay. He also pushed for private mercenary army to lead our efforts in Afghanistan, preposterous insanity. So McMaster was a slight voice of reason. He's also very much a right winger, but he wasn't as insane as Donald Trump. So they didn't get along on those fronts. And McMaster said, well, the Russian interference is clear and obvious. Yes, and Trump did not like that. No, and the other reason that people don't talk about is that anybody with any sense is leaving this administration before it sinks.

Mueller is closing in, he's in the Deutsche Bank account, he's flipped George Nader about their secret meeting of Seashells Island of Eric Princeton, the Russians. He's flipped Rick Gates, who is Manafort's right-hand man, and they had all the Russian dealings and access to it, and the circle is getting tighter. And now he's asked for documents from Trump organization. So a smart guy like McMaster, who is like, number one, I can't stand working with. Who can stand working with this guy? He's a total idiot, changes his mind all the time, blames you for everything.

Whenever he does something stupid, he's like, oh, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, it was him, it was him, right? A petulant little child and perhaps about to get indicted by the special counsel. So McMaster's like, see you, wouldn't want to be, oh, Mr. President. Oh, yeah, I mean, you deserve someone who can give you counsel you agree with. Of course, Mr. President. I got to go. Yeah, I think that he accurately read the tea leaves, could see that everyone around him,

everyone around Trump was either getting fired or resigning. And so I do think that H.R. McMaster made a good decision in stepping down. Now, let's learn a little bit about John Bolton. A lot of you probably already know, but for those of you who don't, he is incredibly hawkish. And so Trump was the candidate who ran as, you know, somewhat of an isolationist when it came to foreign policy. Bolton is the exact antithesis of that. And one thing that Trump kept reiterating during his campaign was how terrible the decision to do a preemptive war in Iraq was. Well, Bolton, till this day, still defends the decision to invade Iraq.

In fact, he said something along the lines of, all right, so I guess there were no weapons of mass destruction. But it was still important to take out Saddam Hussein. anyone who says that things would be more peaceful if we hadn't is wrong. And a lot of people disagree with that. But again, he is- Can I just say, Anna, even Tucker Carlson the other night embarrassed him on national TV. He said, well, obviously the Iraq war turned out to be a mistake. And Bolton's like, I don't agree to that.

And they had a wonderfully awkward moment there. And that was one good thing that Tucker Carlson has done. I think that he was trying to prevent this from happening. for all the other things he's wrong about. He is definitely wrong about, of course, belatedly. We were right from the beginning about the Iraq war, and Bolton couldn't be more wrong. So McMaster leaving is a small part of the story. Bolton arriving is the much bigger part of the story.

Absolutely. And one thing that Trump has in common with Bolton is the type of rhetoric that they both use in referring to dictators like Kim Jong-il in Bolton's case and Kim Jong-un in Trump's case. So back in the early 2000s, you know, the United States was engaging in talks with North Korea to kind of calm down some of the tension. And in the middle of all of that, John Bolton comes in and says some pretty nasty things about Kim Jong-il. Now, we all agree Kim Jong-il was a terrible guy, but, you know, approaching it in this crazy, undiplomatic way in the middle of these talks was not the right way to go.

He got a lot of criticism for that. Now, Trump is very similar. I mean, the way that he's addressed Kim Jong-un is an example of that. And also, Bolton does not think it's a good idea for Trump to meet with Kim Jong-un. He actually thinks that meeting will go terribly and probably lead to military action against North Korea. So this is fascinating, because I don't know which direction Trump is going to go in regards to foreign policy, which I'll explain in a second, and how long Bolton's going

to last. If Bolton lasts a long time, we're in trouble because that means we're going to war. There isn't a war that John Bolton hasn't absolutely fallen. head over heels in love with. And he is, I mean, is it fair to characterize him as one of the top three neocons in the country? Yes, absolutely. He might be number one. So he loved the Iraq war.

He still loves it to this day, as Anna explained. He is pushing for the Iran war. Again, literally no one in the country that is a bigger advocate for going to war with Iran than John Bolton. So let's now talk about the different fallouts from that. If you were a Republican who liked when Trump said, oh, Iraq war was a mistake, we shouldn't have gone in, low energy, Jeff Bush and his brother screwed this up, and you thought, hey, he's not being tough on Russia because he doesn't want to do too much intervention, and that's his policy and his principles, well, then what the hell is John Bolton doing in this administration? He's the least isolationist guy there is. He's an enormous interventionist. So if you take the issue of Afghanistan now to Trump's credit he's like it's a mess and we should basically he was intimating that we should get out. Bolton doesn't want to get out of Afghanistan.

Bolton wants to stay in every single war zone for as long as humanly possible. He believes we should still be in Iraq. So he's still in Iraq. So if you thought, oh, McMaster wanted to stay in Afghanistan longer and so Trump got rid of him because of principle because he wanted to get out of Afghanistan, then why the hell did he pick John Bolton? Okay, so that's point one. Point two is, what is John Bolton going to do on Russia? And that is a huge question mark.

Because let me explain the background. There is a contingent that is against Russia in our government and in our public debate. Part of that is because Vladimir Putin's a bad guy. Part of that is because, not just generically, but obviously sham elections, the taking of Crimea, Crimea, the interference in Georgia, and the list goes on and on. So those are legitimate reasons to be upset with Putin's government in Russia. Then there's a second contingent who's against Russia, because they are helping Bashar al-Assad and hence indirectly helping the government of Iran.

And they are aligned with Iran in that case. And Iran is viewed by Israel as the number one problem, okay, mainly the Israeli right wing. our right wing. So there is a giant contingent in Washington who wants to make sure that we rip up the deal we have with the Iranians, where we got rid of their uranium so they cannot have nuclear weapons. Now, why the hell would you want to rip that up? That deal is working. We not only got rid of any attempt at nuclear weapons, which they had not yet started, but we got rid of their entire nuclear energy program. And all we did was give them their money back, which we had held hostage in cooperation with the rest of.

of the world. That's a great deal. But you want to rip up that deal if you want to go to war with Iran. But the problem is Russia's on Iran's side. So that's why I don't know what's going to happen with Bolton and Trump. There's one thing that you guys, that a lot of the analysts are missing, which is how monstrously stupid Donald Trump is. Thank you. So I wanted to get to that, right? And look, I'm not just saying that to insult him. I'm saying that because we are having this discussion as though Trump is an individual who has sat back and looked at all of the chess pieces and try to figure out the nuances of all the foreign policy that's happening and the decisions that he'd have to make. That is not what Trump has done. Now, one thing that you should

know about Bolton is that he is a regular on Fox News. He is a contributor on Fox News. Trump saw Bolton on Fox News like the way that he carried himself and decided that's going to be my national security advisor, done. He doesn't really know much about Bolton. Now, look, this is obviously my speculation. But remember, we're talking about a president who doesn't like national security briefings. He does not like to sit there and think about foreign policy. So he hasn't looked into all these issues. But Anna, it's not just your speculation, because there's been reports that he liked, these are reports from White House insiders saying that he liked Bolton because he kept seeing him on TV. That's right. And by the way, why didn't he pick Bolton in the first place?

It reports out that when he was deciding his cabinet in the first place, he didn't like the way Bolton looked because his mustache looked funny. Right. I was like, that is. the dumbest reason not to pick anyone, but thank God, because Bolton's a monster, and I don't want him anywhere near the government. But having seen him on Fox News enough, he got past the mustache. This is how this moron is making decisions. Now, why is that relevant? To Anna's point, it isn't just to insult Donald Trump, and everybody knows how stupid he is if you're paying any attention at all, and you're not deeply biased, right? Okay, so when Bolton says, rip up the Iran deal, Trump's like, oh, yeah, that's tough.

I'm going to rip that deal up. I said it was bad. Obama's bad. Obama did that deal, right? What's in it? Trump doesn't know what's in the deal. What are the ramifications of tearing up that deal? He couldn't begin to tell.

He doesn't even know what the word ramification is. Anyway, so no problem. Him and Bolton will get along on that. But when Vladimir calls and says, Donald, what have you done? And it says, hey, wait a minute, I didn't want you to rip up that deal. And now we got issues. then what happens between Trump and Bolton?

Because Trump will be like, what? Flood, Iran. Oh, you guys are aligned with Iran. Color me, an idiot. I didn't know that. Of course he doesn't know that. So when push comes to shove on Iran, I am going to be very curious to see what happens.

Not that he won't rip up the deal. I don't know, maybe Vlad will call before he does, or maybe after he does. But if he fires Bolton, the only reason he did it is not because he doesn't love war. He loves the idea of war. That's the only reason you'd ever hire John Bolton. It'll be because Vladimir told him to.

And so that drama for another day. Yeah, it'll be a rare instance where Russia's involvement with Trump would be somewhat of a good thing. Yeah, look, man, when they interview with elections, terrible. When they're getting the Twitter and the Tumblr, I don't care about, but I do care about the voter rolls and et cetera, et cetera, right? But if they tell them to fire John Bolton, it'll be the greatest favorite Russia ever did for us. Vlad, pick up the phone. All right, let's take a break when we come back and update on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's response to the whole scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast.

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