The Young Turks - Trump Wants Administration To Serve Jail Time For Him And Judge Shutsdown Trump Order

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

Trump is getting even more unhinged. Trump can’t win on immigration. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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TYIT Network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you. in this program, Lance Reddick will be with us. He's gonna do the second hour with us, cover some of the top news stories, and then I'll do an interview with him afterwards. He's an actor, he's also a composer and songwriter as well, and he's on some of the best

shows of all time, including The Wire, Oz, and Lost, among many others. And so it's gonna be great to have not only an actor who has been in some terrific roles, What a wonderful progressive on the panel as well for you guys. Now, huge stories coming out of the Trump administration, obviously. A head of department of Homeland Security is gone, head of Secret Service is gone. New heads are going to roll soon. Some of the nominees are being withdrawn. It is complete utter chaos and madness.

Trump is back to tweeting like a maniac on Twitter. back at being angry at the Mueller report. What happened? I thought it was complete in total exoneration. Interesting. Apparently it's not. What did I tell you? You think he read that report?

He didn't read it. It's 400 pages. He didn't read 399 of them. Okay. Or actually any of them, right? All he read was Barr's summary. He didn't even read Barr's summary. He didn't even read the first page?

No way, no way. And Barr's summary was four pages. That's three pages too long. So of course he had no idea what was in the report. Now I come to find out what's in it and he's in a panic. Don't release it. Okay, so all this, all of these are massively important stories, but perhaps not as important as a story about Iran.

So, and we get back into full chaos with the Trump administration, and also given how many heads he has now taken out and how many illegal orders he has given, I'm back to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, there's only so many loyalists you can kill off. before it comes back to bite you. But let's see what happens. Now, let's do the news and you guys make up your own minds. All right. The Trump administration, with the help and assistance of an immigration hardliner like

Stephen Miller, is conducting a major shake-up within the administration. Now, Kirsten Nielsen, who is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, has been fired or pushed to resign, to be fair. Now, she released a video statement about this, so let's take a quick look at that, and I'll give you more details. I just want to thank the president again for the tremendous opportunity to serve this country. I share the president's goal of securing the border. I will continue to support all efforts to address the humanitarian and security crisis on the border. And other than that, I'm on my way to keep doing what I can for the next few days.

Yeah, she's trying to put on a brave face there. and obviously a political statement to not rock the boat too much. But in reality, her and her allies are leaking like a sieve all over the press. And they're telling you what actually happened. And it is not a pretty picture. So let's tell you what she's secretly telling the press. Right. So first off, we all know that Kirsten Nielsen and Donald Trump have had a tumultuous

relationship before Trump launched his zero tolerance policy of taking children away from their parents of the border. He got into some sort of heated, I wouldn't even call it an argument. It's been described as Trump berating Kirsten Nielsen for her refusal to implement that policy. And then of course later she decided to follow through with it. And publicly she says that she again shares Donald Trump's vision for border security. But that was a terrible thing to carry out. And it appears that she was also pushing back against some of Donald Trump's more recent demands,

including shutting down the border and also denying acceptance of asylum seekers, which is illegal. You can't do that. And so those conversations essentially led to Trump pushing her out of her position. Now another thing to keep in mind is that she had visited Central American countries, particularly Honduras. She traveled to Honduras to sign a regional compact with officials from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. And immediately after that, Trump said that he was going to cut aid and funding to these

countries. This is right after she agreed to a compact with these countries. So he would consistently undercut her efforts in trying to solve this immigration issue. And he would get angry at her because she wouldn't carry out unlawful. actions that Donald Trump expected her to do, like shutting down the border or refusing to accept asylum seekers into the country. Let's now talk about things and the order of insanity that Trump's orders were to Nielsen. Okay, so first of all, what Anna mentioned about going to negotiate with a Central American country.

She goes that, does that because both right wing and left wing, everybody agrees that part The other problem is the economic conditions in those countries. And if you properly incentivize their government, they're gonna wanna work with us more to help stem the tide of immigrants coming out of those countries. Because earlier, our number one issue in undocumented immigrants was people coming in from Mexico looking for jobs. Now that is not the issue anymore, it's people coming in from the Central American countries basically running for their lives.

So she goes to address that in a way that is universally praised. day later, Trump does the exact opposite and says, I'm cutting all eight off, all of it. Now, even right wing people, even people who are massively against immigration, are like, no, don't do that. This is a way that we control those countries and help them, both are true, okay? And now there's gonna be more chaos and more people coming to the border. So that's now, so that's under the category of very ill-advised and incredibly unprofessional unprofessional, to undercut your own cabinet member without even looking into the deal

that she made a day after she makes the deal, it's not just undercutting her, it undercuts the United States of America, because it says, do not listen to any of our negotiators, no matter how senior they are, because the president will reverse them in a tweet without thinking, giving it a second thought. So nothing that any representative of the United States of America says under Trump means anything. Don't bother talking to them, because only Trump decides. Can I jump in because I want to add to that point. Not only can you not trust anything a Trump official says, you can also count on Trump saying

one thing one day and then immediately changing his mind the next. So the whole debate over shutting down the border, everyone was in agreement with the exception of Donald Trump that shutting down the border would be a disaster for our economy and it would be disastrous for the auto industry. And so his aides finally convinced him to lay off all the shutting down the border talk. But today, he's continuing with these tweets about shutting down the border. I'll give you an example. More apprehensions captures, this is graphic five, at the southern border than in many years.

Border Patrol amazing, country is full, system has been broken for many years. Democrats in Congress must agree to fix loopholes, no open borders, crime and drugs. I mean, we'll close southern border if necessary. So that fragmented, jumbled up nonsense that you just read ends with we'll shut down the border if I don't get what I want. So he's still threatening to shut down the border. And with Trump, you never know what you're gonna get. You never know if he's gonna wake up one day and decide, yeah, let me go take the nuclear

option like he did with the 35 day government shutdown and be super defiant and do exactly what everyone has told me not to do because it would be bad not just for the country, but It would be bad for his administration. So Nielsen allies, like I said, are leaking all over the press now. And one of the things they say is that Trump in the recent days has become, quote, increasingly unhinged. So now he was already unhinged to begin with. Now, fair is fair, you can say, hey, look, she just left the administration, basically asked

to leave, technically a resignation, but really a firing. So hey, maybe they're leaking because they're bitter about it. Okay, her and every other person within the administration that reports the same exact thing. So if it was by itself, I'd say, hey, buyer beware. Within the context of every other story sounds exactly right. One other person close to Nielsen said, in terms of immigration policy, they failed with the courts and with Congress, and now they're eating their own.

And that is exactly right, that's what's gonna get me to tick, take in a second. But now let's move on to the two other gigantic issues. So undercutting your own representative with those Latin American countries, any other administration, it would be one of the worst scandals that ever happened. Did you not know what your Department of Homeland Security was negotiating? Or why did you let her negotiate it? What kind of an incompetent buffoon has their representative do a deal and then reverses that deal the next day publicly?

Okay, now, that is the least of Trump's problems. The second problem is wanting to shut down the border. Look, on that, the day that he threatened it most significantly, we came on the air, and I said, man, even though it makes no sense at all to shut down the border, and it would be an economic disaster, maybe the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time, at least a decade, right? And I'm like, but I said, but he might do it anyway. And then he came out, Mitch McConnell upbraided him and lectured him, and he came out and

said, well, I'm not closing it. I'm gonna wait a year, I'm gonna see how they're doing on drugs, but what did I tell you? He can't help himself, so he's out there tweeting, just Anna read it to you earlier, our country's full, I might close down. It turns out on March 22nd, he gave an order to close down the border, the port at Alpaso in Texas to not only Nielsen but also to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And they're not listening to his orders anymore, because some of them are sole advised

the country's gonna blow up. Now, which gets a point number three, some are just flat out illegal. So he tells not only those guys, but he tells agents that it would enforce it in a meeting, you are to no longer accept asylum seekers. But that violates US law. Yes. So then he leaves the room, I don't know if it was physically or on, or if it was a call, but Trump's no longer in the meeting.

And then the agents look at their leaders according to the sourcing, and they go, so what do we do? And the leaders within the Trump administration say, don't do it, ignore the president, that is an illegal act, you'll be personally liable, okay? The guy has no idea what the law is, doesn't care what the law is, constantly gives illegal orders, and then puts people in a completely untenable situation where either they're going to go to jail for following his order, or they're going to be fired by the impetuous child. That's exactly right.

And he's only being encouraged by Stephen Miller, who is the hardliner on immigration within the administration, right? He's the one who is encouraging Donald Trump to fire these people. He's the one who's encouraging Trump to replace them with individuals who are willing to carry out whatever it is that Donald Trump wants, whether it be legal or illegal. And so Stephen Miller is getting exactly what he wants. He's been fearmongering about migrants and foreigners for a very long time, and he is the exact type of yes man that Donald Trump needs by his side in order to justify some of the actions

that he's taking right now. So for people who are happy that Kirsten Nielsen is out, I get you, she was terrible, and she carried out these horrible policies because she enjoyed her position of power. She was much more willing to remain in that position of power and carry out these policies. But I'm concerned about whoever is now going to replace these people, what they're going to do, whether they're going to listen to Donald Trump, because we do have laws, especially when it comes to asylum, and he has no interest in following them. And he's been on the record multiple times saying that he has no respect and doesn't see the

value in having immigration judges. So this situation is only going to get worse. And to be honest, this is me predicting. But I would not put it past him to shut down the border. That's how defiant and insane he is. He just does not understand the consequences of his actions and his decisions. When someone tells you, and not just someone, but everyone in your administration tells you, sir, that is illegal, we cannot do it.

Most rational people would say, oh, that's interesting. Even if you want to do it and you want to figure out how to do it, you'd say, okay, how do Do we, A, change the law? Or let me do a conspiracy here where I get my allies and we figure out how to break the law. But what you don't say in front of everyone in the government is, who cares? Just break the law. All of you break the law. Why would you say that?

Because you're maniacally stupid. You don't know anything. This is why, look guys, I keep saying the emperor has no clothes on it. And we have CNN right now having, I'm sure, a 50-50 debate with a Trump supporter and a and someone who's not a Trump supporter. It's not 50-50, the president is giving illegal orders. And CNN, to be fair to CNN, they're reporting that. Jake Tapper broke some of these stories, okay?

But you gotta follow through and you gotta say, what are we gonna do in a country where the president won't follow the law? So he can keep on firing people. He's got a new guy coming in to be the top border enforcement officer, Kevin McAllen. Alinen. Yeah, so Kevin McAllenon actually did serve in. Obama's administration, so that's interesting. He is currently the top U.S. border enforcement officer, and he has been chosen to take Kirsten

Nielsen's place. So I don't know if he is going to carry out all of the demands that Donald Trump has, but if he does, things are about to get a lot worse. So this McAllen guy appears to be deeply political, and he got along with Obama, find and Trump comes in, all of a sudden he becomes a massive right winger and is one of the people who was most instrumental in and supported separating families at the border. And that's probably why Trump picked them. But he's also a careerist and cares a lot about protecting his own reputation.

He's married to a Salvadoran immigrant. He wrote his honors thesis on marriage equality. So I don't know and I can't predict what he's going to do inside the Trump administration, He went from a moderate to a massive right winger overnight because it helped his career. On the other hand, he also appears to be a guy that if you give him an illegal order is going to be savvy enough to realize not to carry out an illegal order, in which case Trump is going to be furious with him and say, I can't believe this son of a bitch won't break the law either.

And probably his time will be limited. And by the way, he's replacing a nominee. And this goes to all the three points I mentioned earlier. So, he had nominated Ronald Vitello as head of ice, and then just out of nowhere, out of the blue, withdrew him and said, I want someone who's tougher. You know why? Because Stephen Miller went to Trump and mentioned that Vitello is not in favor of shutting down the border.

Because no one is. No one in the Republican Party is. Now look, I always say, you know, the press takes it too easy on both Republican Party leaders and their voters, because they all back Donald Trump, and over 90% of Republican voters do, so they're just as culpable as Trump, and they're just as bad in a lot of ways. But on this issue, to be fair, no other Republican, with the possible exception of Stephen Miller, is on Donald Trump's side. Mitch McConnell, all the Republican politicians in Congress, all the Republican think tank guys,

all the Republican donors are like, shut down the border and stop all trade? That would be the dumbest thing we've ever heard in our entire lives, and it would be an economic disaster immediately. And Trump's like, yeah, I need somebody to do it, okay? I want to shut it down. I don't like the immigrants coming in, so I just shut border. What's the problem? You're an idiot.

So this is the one issue that you can't put as culpability on the Republican Party. It's just this lone madman who has no earthly idea what he's doing. Republican leaders on Vitello apparently went to the White House and they're like, why Why did you withdraw him? You nominated him. We didn't nominate him. You, Donald J. Trump, nominated Vitello, and then all of a sudden you turn around and say, oh, I'm withdrawing him because he's not tough enough because he doesn't want to close down the border.

First of all, none of us want to close down the border. This is what Republican leaders are telling you, right? Second of all, didn't you do your homework? Of course not. Of course not. Of course not. Didn't you know that he didn't want to shut down the border? And how are you going to find a guy who's going to say, oh yeah, let's ruin the entire American

economy by shutting down the border. Oh yeah, let's say for the asylum seekers, sorry, we're not following the law anymore, we're full. You're not, look, if you find a guy like that, okay, and if McAllen turns out to be that guy, and then you're gonna cry when later people investigate you for breaking the law, because you're doing it right out in the open, and then you're gonna say, oh, 13 angry Democrats, witch hunt, et cetera, et cetera, and then we're gonna find out if this system holds or not. Because if he keeps putting people under power that will follow illegal orders as opposed

to opposing illegal orders, well, we're not gonna have the government we have now, we're not gonna have a democracy like we used to. So, you know, as horrible as Nielsen was, and she went, she nearly resigned a while back now, okay? And she had written her resignation letter in the middle of the separation of families' crisis, which she initially, apparently, internally, if you believe the leaks, opposed. But she decided not to resign and she went all in with Trump. And she said, oh, no, that's right, separating families, great idea, wonderful, and that's

why now she's mainly known for that, et cetera. So she made her bed and she lies in and I got no sympathy for her. I'm sure she has a career waiting for her at CNN. Of course. To keep it real. But if you keep knocking out deeply right wing people simply because they will not break the law. And that is my silver lining for Nielsen. Apparently, when given an illegal order, she did not execute that order. So it's a super low bar, but apparently some are not going

to clear it. And if they don't, there should be consequences. But is the system going to hold or is it not going to hold? Will he eventually find Republicans who go, the legal order? No problem at all. Can do, we'll do, we'll do it immediately. And that's when, that's when our honestly, It's no exaggeration, our system of government will be tested. It's being tested right now by Donald Trump. And to the point of whether he's gonna make it or not, is he going to win or is the American system going to win? I got the American system winning narrowly, okay, it's a toss up, but I still think that

at some point, and only because of Donald Trump's incompetence, he's gonna lose this battle. And so what does that mean? Well, that means that if you've cut off enough of your loyalists, you've got no one left to fight for you. So if they catch them on something, well, they've already caught on things that are illegal, right? What? More illegal than the campaign finance violations and the other things that I can get into?

Okay, but they catch them on something that lands politically as well as legally. Do you think Nielsen's going to step up to defend them or Mattis or Kelly or anyone else that, Tillerson or anyone else that was in his administration, and when they start telling the truth about what happened, and he's already insulted every Republican in Congress, who's there left to defend Donald Trump? At some point, there is a price to pay for killing off all your allies. And that's what he does every time because he's too stupid to realize that is not a- One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body,

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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. All right, back on Young Turks. So first of all, guys, if you ever want to follow us in terms of where we're going to be or what the Young Turks is up to or sometimes get some of our best clips sent to you, go to t-y-t.com slash newsletter.

So I'm going to be in D.C. tomorrow, by the way, I go to this great conference on patriotic millionaires who want their taxes increased, check out Facebook for that. Facebook.com slash the Young Turks that I'll be speaking there on Wednesday. But meanwhile, it's a great, great way, best way to keep in Dutch with us is t.t.com slash newsletter. All right, let me read some comments for you guys. First member section, Trifty says, Kirsten Nielsen belongs in prison. Agreed.

Neil says, which of the Mexican countries did she go to when she went into negotiations? And the neon donkey said, Anna said it last week, Trump doesn't want the border issue solved, that's his best angle with his supporters. 100%. This is, what else does he have? Think about it, what else does he have to rile up his base? I don't agree with you guys. So- Okay.

No, I'll tell you why. It's two reasons. One, there's never any strategy. Two, in specific to this, he is apparently, according to this, he is, apparently, according to the inside administration officials that are saying unflattering things about him. He is legitimately really mad at Nielsen and everyone else that they can't stop the immigrants from coming in. Now the reality is, it has nothing new with Nielsen, it has to do with Trump's own policies.

Of course, he never blames himself. But it's not like he's trying to get more immigrants, undocumented immigrants to come and for there to be a crisis. He's really pissed at how many people are coming in. He just doesn't know how to effectively manage at all. He doesn't know how to solve it. So the only thing he knows is how to yell at people, demean them, and he apparently demeaned her in front of the cabinet several times.

And by the way, that humiliation you put up with it for power, fame and wealth. Was it worth it? I mean, this is a thing that, and we've had this conversation many times, but I just, I have to bring it up one more time, probably again in the future though. Was it worth it? I mean, everyone who's currently serving in his administration has seen what happened to their peers, they have followed through on Trump's demands, in some cases pushed back lightly.

In the case of Kirsten Nielsen, she would deflect, she wouldn't outright deny and say, no, I can't do that. She would find clever ways to avoid carrying out unlawful actions that the president was trying to force her to do. And they got rid of her, they got rid of her. And so if you're in the administration right now, your days are numbered. Your days are numbered, just look at the pattern. And everybody knows it, and now the Republican senators know it too, that Trump has no allies.

He will throw you under a bus. Look, I can't say that Nielsen will be the straw that broke the camel's back. Because this camel's back when it comes to a Republican Party. It's a strong back. It appears to be an unbreakable back. But I don't think it is unbreakable. I think it will break, because Trump can break anything. And so he's gonna accidentally smash his own administration, his own allies.

All right, let's see how that plays out. Last couple of comments here, Hangary Skywalker says, Trump's administration is like an onion of political misery. And in fact, Nielsen told people who were close to her that working in administration every day was, quote, miserable. Because look, they're following Joffrey. So they're trying to figure out how do I make sense of things that don't make sense? And then when I do something that is rational, he yells at me and demeans me in front

of everyone. How could you not be miserable? He's never given a rational order in his life. And so try to keep up with that, all right, enjoy. They're all going to turn on him at some point because they're gonna realize he's not in it for them. There's only one guy Donald Trump is in it for, Donald Trump. And when they realize that, they realize, oh, we're gonna be next, you idiots, then

I think the Republican Party, that's the only way that they would ever turn on him. All right, Izumi assure us his only illegal immigrant Trump likes are the ones he can Mary, and finally on YouTube Super Chat P, just simply says, left is best. Thank you. All right, what's next, Dana? All right. We have a breaking news story. A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump's program forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico

as they await their court hearings. Now this is a policy of Donald Trump's that he has been bragging about, and it appears that a federal judge has deemed this unlawful. So the federal judge on Monday blocked this experimental administration policy, and it's a major blow to President Trump as border crossings have surged to their highest point in more than a decade. So in 2000 was when border crossings were actually at record levels. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but the type of migrants seeking asylum are different.

These are individuals from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador seeking safety because of crime and violence in their own countries. The judge says, quote, what it will mean is that nobody else can be sent to Mexico. And he also says, Judy, I'm sorry, she also says they can't enforce this policy. No, that's not a judge. Sorry, that's the ACLU attorney in the case. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Judy Rabinovitz.

The story just broke, so I apologize for that. But it has been deemed unlawful. So the asylum seekers do get to come to U.S. soil as they await their court dates. Yeah, the U.S. District Court judge in this case was Richard Seaborg in San Francisco, and he would enjoined, meaning stopped, the Migrant Protection Protocols Policy days days after Kiersen Nielsen pledged to expand the program. So the judge saying, not only will you not expand it, you will stop it completely, because because it is not legal.

So this was Kirsten Nielsen's way of trying to legally follow an illegal order. And the courts have said, no, it's in violation of the law, it's not that hard, pretty easy one, so you're not allowed to do it. When someone is seeking asylum, according to U.S. law, you must admit them, hear their case. You don't have to admit them into citizenship or in the country or any pathway to citizenship. And a lot of times the asylum seekers are rejected, in fact, most of the time. But you must go through a legal process. And when Trump says, oh, I don't care, a country's full.

One of our viewers just asked on Twitter, does that mean we can't have babies anymore? Okay, what does that mean our country's full? That's not a legal doctrine. It's not something you can argue in court. And when the president says, yeah, but I just don't want to follow the law, once again, not a winning argument in a court of law. So the fact that they were going to get rejected was obvious, and now they have been rejected. And Nielsen's already out, so she was probably relieved, like, hey, man, not my problem anymore.

Your problem, apparently Nielsen argued against this policy internally to begin with. Trump insisted on it. In fact, he asked agents to carry out this policy illegally first before they went through this attempt to try to put a legal veneer on it. And other leaders in the Trump administration, according to reporting from inside the White House, said to the agents, do not follow those illegal orders. You will have personal liability and responsibility. So guys are buffoon, doesn't know what's illegal, gives illegal orders, and then when

the so-called sophisticated people inside his administration, try to put some sort of desperate legal veneer to it, the courts easily block it and go, no, you can't. just break the law because you're the president. Let's talk a little more about what's happening in government right now under the Trump administration. The Trump administration has fired the Secret Service Director Randolph Alice. He had been in the position since April of 2017, but he was fired following reports that a Chinese woman carrying technology with malware was able to successfully enter the

the Mar-a-Lago Resort, she told a Secret Service official that she was there, and apparently she had a family member at the resort. Apparently there was some sort of miscommunication going on. The Secret Service officer thought, oh, maybe there's some sort of language barrier here. But by the time the woman entered the resort and was at reception, it became clear that she was not a member. She did not have a family member who was part of the resort, and it was discovered after she became very hostile that she did have malware on several pieces of technology.

So as a result, the head of the Secret Service has been fired. So that's what everybody's reporting, but I do want to challenge one part of that, which is the part of the sentence that said as a result. So we have no idea why he was actually fired. So could it be for that legitimate reason? Sure, it could. And I don't say that dismissively, it really could. The other reason it could be is God knows what the Donald Trump is that.

thinking because he's firing everybody. So he fired the Department of Homeland Security Chief Nielsen. He just withdrew Ronald Vitello, who was his nominee to head ICE because he wasn't tough enough, quote unquote. In this case, with Randolph Tax Alice, he apparently had been told a couple of weeks ago that there would be a transition, but the announcement was made as usual, completely abruptly, and without going through the normal protocols. The Secret Service had no idea that it was going to happen.

You know how they found out? Through Twitter? Close. CNN. They were watching TV and they found out that the head of the Secret Service had been asked to leave, removed by Trump. And they're like, what the hell's going on? Hey, Donald Trump, you've done this a thousand times.

So I don't know why I'm giving him advice because this would actually help him manage his administration somewhat competently. We're supposed to tell people inside the administration first before you tweet about it or you summarily fire the guy and then it's all over the news. That's called due diligence, that's called homework. This is called normal, rational sense. Management 101, he never does it because he couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag. He didn't go bankrupt six times by accident, he did it because he's incredibly unintelligent.

So he does it again with the Secret Service. What's his real beef with Ellis? I have no idea. It might be because of the Mar-a-Lago thing. Or it might be have something do with things that we don't know. But he's firing people left and right. This is, if you include the guy that he had nominated three people that he's definitively getting rid of.

Now there's rumors that Stephen Miller's targeting someone else who's a massive right-wing in the administration also having to do with immigration, but not right-wing enough. So that'd be four guys if that one happens. So it is basically a purge inside the White House. Why are they purging? Because no one is right wing enough. And part of it is because some of the officials will not carry out illegal orders. So do you know for sure that he didn't give an illegal order to Alice?

And Alice said, sir, I'm sorry, our job is to protect you, but we're not going to do what you're asking us to do. Well, I mean, I put that probability at about 89%. Yeah. Well, all right, we're going to take a break, but when we come back, I'm going to give you some information about a lawyer who's working in the labor department who had absolutely no interest in helping the American people with labor protections. Come right. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that

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with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at TYT.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on Young Turks, so only time for one comment, and I'm only doing it

because we found him, the alleged Bernie Bro, a new member with the Twitter, with not Twitter handle, TYT handle of Bernie Bro. And he says, new member, happy to be here. We're happy to have you, Bernie, bro. Okay. TYT.com slash join if you want to become a member. You guys make the show possible. All right, Anna, we got two giant stories coming up here.

Yes, we do. House Democrats have been fighting to get a hold of Donald Trump's taxes. In fact, the House Ways and Means Committee had sent a letter requesting six years worth of Donald Trump's business and personal taxes. Now, with that said, it appears that the Trump administration and his lackeys are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of his tax returns. And Mick Mulvaney, who is his current acting chief of staff, is, you know, spreading the Trump talking points on this matter. Here's Mulvaney doing just that.

To be clear, you believe Democrats will never see the president's tax returns. Oh, no, never. Nor should they. Keep in mind that that's an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn't and they elected him anyway. So Mulvaney is wrong there, and I'm going to prove it to you. You might think that voters, especially Trump voters, were okay with not seeing his taxes.

But that is actually completely false. During the election, Donald Trump said on multiple occasions that he would be okay with releasing his taxes and that he intended to release his taxes. Here's some evidence of that. Would you release tax returns? Well, we're working on that now. Very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful. Well, I'd certainly go over tax returns. I'm very honest with my tax returns.

What is your tax rate? I'm not going to say it, but at some point I'll release it. The only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters. Okay, they're the only ones. Nobody cares about it except some of the folks in the media. Nobody cares about it. I don't think they care at all. I think you care. They're extremely complex. People wouldn't understand them. Nobody knows the tax return business or world better than me. But people don't understand tax returns. Getting any closer to releasing your tax returns?

Well, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about maybe when we find out the true story on Hillary's emails. You said afterwards, if you produce that long form birth cert, you produce your tax returns, but you didn't do it, did you? Well, I don't know. Did he do it? As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I've been audited every year. They're under audit. They have been for a long time. Well, I'm not releasing the tax returns, because as you know, they're under audit. But I'm being audited now for two or three years. And I'm under audit, a routine audit. And when the audit's complete, I'll release my returns. But when the audit is complete, I'll release my returns. I have no problem with it.

that it doesn't matter. Audit me, audit me, audit me. Okay, so two things about that. Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, who would know, obviously, said that, in fact, he was not under audit in 2016 and lied about it. And part of the reason that he lied about it is because he didn't want to be audited, and he's worried that if federal regulators, investigators, look at his tax returns, they will seek criminal fraud.

And of course, that's why he's hiding in. Plus, he's of course not nearly as rich as he makes himself out to be. The guy's gone bankrupt six times. He's basically burned through daddy's money. So loser through and through hiding it, said he would release him, not releasing them. Look, even if you're a Magger guy, you can say, oh, I don't care, nobody care, you can say anything you like. But what you can't say is that he's not hiding them because he clearly is.

He clearly is hiding them, and we can only predict what could be in those tax returns, but there are ways of not predicting. There are reports, that very in-depth New York Times report looking into Donald Trump's inheritance, and what he and his family did in basically committing tax fraud. It was right there, it was reported. It was a lengthy piece by the New York Times, but it was excellent reporting. And so if you look at his past and what he was willing to do in the past to save money in taxes, by committing tax fraud, it wouldn't be farfetched to assume that he would carry

out that same activity or behavior with subsequent tax filings. Now with that said though, regardless of what the MAGA guys think or what the MAGA guys want, if you look at polling on this issue, the vast majority of Americans do want to see his tax So Washington Post ABC poll conducted in January of this year found that 60% of people want the new House Democratic majority to do what's now, what they're now trying to do, which is obtain them, to obtain those tax returns. So 60% of the country is no joke, man. You don't win elections if 60% of the country is opposing you.

So, and you remember, there's usually a category of don't know, not sure, et cetera. So the number of people saying that, nah, he shouldn't release them is not a high number, obviously. Now let's talk about the law for a second, because of course he's on Twitter saying, the law's 100% with me. So it depends. So this one is actually more mixed. So he did not release his tax returns unlike every president since 1976. But by law, he does not have to release them.

So that part is true, a shockingly somewhat true statement by Donald Trump. Okay, now, when the Democrats in the House asked for his tax returns, by law, he must give it to them. And more accurately, the IRS must hand it over to the Treasury Department, which must hand it over to Congress. That's a hundred percent fact, there's nothing they could do about that. So the law is not with him once Congress asks for the returns and they have. Well, so what Milvaney, his acting chief of staff is saying is, we're gonna fight it and we're

to try to drag it out in court. So even though they're right on the law, hopefully it'll take so long that we can get past the election without you guys realizing what an embarrassment in lifelong criminal, my bosses. And so that's what's happening now. But the law is super clear. The only defense of the Republicans have, and it's a sad one. But of course, as usual, legitimized by the mainstream media, who has to say, hey, he said this, and she said that and bruh, right, is well, the law that the Democrats are using

to get a tax returns are from the 1920s. So? And like I literally, I don't know what that means. So does that mean our Constitution is worthless? Exactly. And the Constitution is from 1789, so I guess that doesn't matter anymore. So that makes no sense at all. Wow.

Like, oh, counterpoint, I didn't see that one coming. So you're telling me that it's been the law of the land for a long time. That doesn't really help your case. So yes, we have every right to see. his tax returns. And if he doesn't turn him over, as usual, he is trying to subvert the legal process. Let's do a little foreign policy. Donald Trump has just done something incredibly unprecedented when it comes to naming a terrorist

organization. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. has now named Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a terrorist group. Trump designated Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a foreign terrorist organization organization, marking the first time Washington is formally labeled another country's military a terrorist group. Now, in the past, presidents have avoided doing this, and currently the Republican Party, several members of the Republican Party, are against doing this, because it allows Iran to target

our military and designate the United States government as a terrorist group, which is exactly what Iran did in retaliation of Trump's move. So the IRGC is the Iranian government's primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign, and that's a direct quote from Donald Trump in legitimizing this move. Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump's lackey, is also spreading these talking points. Here's an example. Today, the United States is continuing to build its maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime. I am announcing our intent to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including its goods force as a foreign terrorist organization. This is the first time that the United States has designated a part of another government as an FTO.

We're doing it because the Iranian regime's use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft makes it fundamentally different from any other government. This designation is a direct response to an outlaw regime and should surprise no one. Yeah, except the entire military and the rest of government. So let me give you a few more details, Jank. Iran's Supreme National Security Council as a result of this has designated the U.S. military forces as a terrorist organization. So this is an incredibly important consequence to keep your eye on, because again, one of the reasons why our government has avoided doing this in the past is because they don't want

to put members of our military in jeopardy. And that is exactly what Donald Trump did today. So this could devolve pretty quickly and disastrously. I'll get to that in a second, but more on the ramifications first. In 2017, Iran Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammed al-Jafari said, if this were to happen, the Revolutionary Guard being deemed terrorists, quote, then the Revolutionary Guards will consider the American army to be like the Islamic State all around the world. world, so the equivalent of ISIS.

So now a lot of you might not know this, you're progressives and you watch the Young Turks, you will know it, but I'm sure the right way has no idea. Iran is deeply opposed to ISIS. Isis is extremist Sunni faction, Iran is Shiite, and they have longstanding feud with the Sunnis. So ISIS is the mortal enemy of Iran. And instead of in some ways doing cooperation with Iran to defeat ISIS, what we have now done has opened up a second front against Iran. Now Iran is saying, okay, then we're gonna treat you like ISIS.

And that is not a good sign. So now if you said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has done things that are deeply problematic, I would agree with you, they have. And so am I sure that they are not supporting terrorist groups throughout the world? No, I'm not at all sure of that. They certainly might be. So is that a cause of concern? Absolutely.

And every government that we've had has been concerned. about that. But there's a reason why they didn't go to this extra step. Now let me fill in the blanks for what a lot of the rest of the press, for their understandable caution can't explain, okay? Or I mean, my opinion is not explaining well enough. So a lot of folks are saying even the critics of Trump administration, this is largely a symbolic move and it endangers our troops for no net gain.

I actually don't agree with that. It is not largely a symbolic move because it does affect. their banking and financial interests. And as we saw with Russia, that is their number one concern literally with a bullet, okay? Oh, you're against my foreign policy interest in Ukraine or Venezuela. I care, you shut down my bank account? No, okay, that's the third rail. That's what oligarchs care about, whether they're in Russia or they're in Iran, whether

they're allied with Donald Trump or opposed to Donald Trump. So when you touch the money, that is when they go nuclear. Why, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as with a lot of the oligarchs, are corrupt, they're deeply corrupt. I'm fundamentally opposed to them, I think they oppress the Iranian people and they present a danger in the area. But we do not make it better by going in antagonizing and going an extra step that no one else in the world thinks is necessary.

And everyone else, including Russia and our European partners and China and NATO, every Everyone says don't do it, with a notable exception of one person, why do they say that? Because we already have a lot of sanctions on Iran. And Trump already ripped up the peace deal, the nuclear deal that we had with Iran. You don't need to go any further. It doesn't get you anything more, but what it does do is it antagonize them to the maximum degree until they strike back at you. Yes.

Okay, so now, who's the one person in the world that's happy about this? Benjamin Netanyahu. He's about to go into an election tomorrow, and he put out a statement thanking his beloved friend Donald Trump, because this is an election gift to Netanyahu, basically the American government saying, we'll do anything Netanyahu says. We don't care how stupid it is. We don't care how much it endangers American troops. Whatever Netanyahu says, Donald Trump will do.

So Netanyahu and Trump apparently think that that will help his election chances, I hope Not, by the way, if, do you know that, so Iran never had a nuclear weapons program. So that was a lot of bluster. They did have a nuclear energy program, but it would have taken them years and years to convert that to a nuclear weapons program. Now luckily, they're not going to have that opportunity or they weren't going to have that opportunity because Obama and the rest of the world negotiated to deal with the Iranians take away their nuclear energy, not weapons, their energy program.

So they have no nuclear program at all anymore, okay? But they're considering whether they should restart it because Trump broke the deal. Now, that doesn't mean they don't have any missiles. They have a ton of missiles and they could hit not only Israel but American military bases all throughout the Middle East. So if you're living in Israel, the real mortal threat to you is not a bunch of small rockets from Hamas. They're terrible, disgusting, et cetera.

But Iran's got significant missile capability that is just traditional missiles. And they can bombard Israel. And yes, we gave them the Iron Dome and that would help a lot. And yes, Israel has a massive military and yes, America would back them up. But you get into a war with Iran and you are poking a bear for no goddamn reason, except to help the political careers of Netanyahu and Donald Trump. It endangers Israel more than almost anything you can do. Why are you doing that?

Why? Just to help these politicians. It's gross. We had a deal, man. The whole world believes in that deal. But they don't even have a nuclear energy program anymore. I know, Jank, but I mean, you know this. You know that they don't want peace.

A president is most popular when, at times of war. And so Israel has been trying to go to us into engaging in war with Iran for how long now. It didn't work under Obama. It appears that Trump, and this is just my read of it, is laying the groundwork for war. So I think unfortunately that's true. Look, last two things on this. One is, we always say the right-wing government of Israel, and that is true. It's the right-wing government of Israel that wants war, not all Israelis, because a lot of Israelis

are going to die if that war is as bad as I think it would be. But you guys are about to decide, do you want a right-wing government or don't you if you're in Israel? This is only for Israeli citizens, nobody else gets to say anything about it, right? But if you make the decision to go to in Netanyahu's direction, brace for it. impact. And I don't want that to happen. That's why we, I'm almost literally yelling and screaming here. Don't go that. Look, do you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me exactly of right before the Iraq war. When we were screaming and yelling on the young Turks, don't go. Don't go.

It's a terrible idea. And everybody's like, oh, what would they know? It'll be easy. If Bush administration officials told us it would only take a couple of weeks and maybe $1.1 billion. Over a trillion dollars later and over a trillion dollars. And over a potentially a million lives lost, innocent civilian lives lost, it's now considered the worst foreign policy debacle in American history. Now, Iran is significantly larger than Iraq. It's four times larger than Iraq, and it has a much bigger military, and it has the ability to launch military attacks all throughout the Middle East.

And you're going to go and fight that for no reason other than to help right-wing politicians. And so I know we all think that Israel is invincible because it's got America behind it and it has military potentially greater than all the Middle East combined. But no one is invincible. And why go into the bloodshed in the first place, let alone the fact that you saw what happened with Iraq, you do Iran and you'll light the Middle East on fire. And guess where Israel is? In the Middle East, don't do it, don't do it.

But here we are, Trump and Netanyahu playing with fire. God, I hope he loses that election for the sake of Israel and the whole world. And if he wins and Trump and him go in this direction, and Trump gets more desperate. To Anna's point, what's his only chance of winning an election when he's deeply unpopular? Polling now has him losing 24 points in Florida since the 2016 election, 19 points in Pennsylvania. He's toast, Trump is toast. And you can't tell if you watch cable news because they call everything 50-50, but he's toast.

So if he comes in and he thinks, hey, that worked for Netanyahu and he won his election, let me go further. Let me, because then if Iran does a bombing in response to what we just did, they're gonna say, we're under attack, we're under attack, and then Trump's gonna bomb more, then Iran's gonna bomb more, and here we go. We're off to the races of an unbelievable war. Look, it'll make Iraq look like child's play. And you can say that's exaggeration, that's exactly what they told us right before the Iraq war. We've been right about this a hundred times.

You go to war with Iran and you will light the whole world on fire. I couldn't think of a worse move for America or Israel or our allies or anyone. And here they are, two monsters going bumping the night and heading us in that direction. all right we got to take a break we got lance red it coming up next he's wonderful progressive so stay right with us we'll be right back thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen to ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank yugar and i'll see you soon